I had a good early morning dog walk with Meg and Gracie first thing, it was a cool start at 6C but quite a promising start to the day. I had a business meeting in Harrogate later this morning regarding some of my photography work so as soon as I had got the dogs settled, had breakfast we headed off to Harrogate. Depending on the traffic I usually allow fifty minutes for the journey and today was no exception, other than a few long standing road works in the centre of the town the journey was reasonably straight forward.  After a good meeting I drove over to RHS Harlow Carr for a walk round the gardens followed by lunch in Bettys, something I always enjoy.

The car park this morning wasn’t too full and I managed to get pack reasonably close to the visitors centre. Unfortunately the bit of brightness I was hoping for did not materialise and as we showed our membership cards to the staff and walked through the centre  onto the grounds there was a distinctively cold westerly breeze accompanied by some light drizzle, I was pleased that I had a reasonably warm and waterproof outdoor jacket with me.

There has been a hive of activity around the gardens since our last visit in February, a lot of shrubs have been heavily pruned and all the borders had been cleared of the dead growth from last year’s planting and many of the wide borders especially by the streamside walk were looking quite bare. That said the area just before the sunken garden was a picture of colour, with huge borders of Hyacinth and daffodils, this I thought was  probably one of the most picturesque and colourful areas of the garden at the moment. I am certain that the number of willow made dinosaurs has grown since our last visit too, they looked very good alongside the path, providing great photo opportunities for the discerning visitors.  

After leaving the dinosaurs we continued following the trail round past Queen Margaret’s lake and followed the Streamside walk to the old bath house, the wind blowing along this part of the trail was extremely cold so we didn’t hang about. From the bath house I like to follow the trail on the opposite side of the stream and head up to the Sandstone rock garden. This area was re designed earlier this year and once the new planting becomes more established will look really eye-catching. From the rock garden it is just a short walk back up to the visitors centre and into Bettys for a welcome cup of tea and sandwich.