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Saturday 3 March 2018

Spotlight Saturday - The Forgotten Gardens of Easton Lodge

A little while ago I saw a post on Twitter about the snowdrop open days at Easton Lodge and immediately pencilled them onto my calendar as a morning out for me and Hugh.

Last Sunday was the 2nd of two days they were open. The gardens are run by volunteers and only open on a few days a year, but they are well worth the visit!

'The Gardens of Easton Lodge are an idyllic haven (Historic England, Grade II listed). They have been partially restored to their former glory by a team of dedicated volunteers and the owners of Warwick House.'

Sunday was very cold, but beautifully bright and sunny so we wrapped up warm and drove the 40 minutes to the gardens. It was £4.50 each which we thought was very reasonable. The volunteers also had a little 'cafe' there with bacon or cheese rolls and hot coffee and tea.

The snowdrops really were beautiful - unfortunately they really did not show up too well on the photos! We spent about an hour walking around, looking at the millenium sundial...
The carving made out of a dead tree which had been left in situ...
The Italian garden.....
The walled garden...

And we went up the treehouse...

The queue for hot drinks was pretty long, but fortunately I had put a flask in our car so we returned to the car and had a lovely warm coffee before we set off...
This made me feel very much like Hugh's late parents as they always had a flask when they went out for the day!

We had a fantastic morning walk and I am very keen to go back again in the summer to see the garden with its summer clothes on. There were lots of picnic tables dotted around so it would be fun to take a picnic lunch. As it was, on Sunday we went off to the Toby Carvery and had a relatively Slimming World friendly roast dinner - and it was yummy!
If you live locally enough to visit I would thoroughly recommend a visit to Easton Lodge Gardens, but do check first if they are open - they are only open on 9 days a year! And have a read up on their website about the history - it's fascinating!





3 comments:

Ruth said...

That's the sort of place we'd enjoy visiting (although not so much with TBC in tow!). As for the flask, it's merely the circle of life!

alexa said...

What a lovely way to spend a morning! I like that wooden tree sculpture with the ivy. Smiled at the flask of coffee - my Mum and Dad did that too :). We have a very similar place up here called Hopton Hall, and we visited their snowdrops recently.

Missus Wookie said...

I think we've been there, I do love snowdrops. Glad you had a flask because those lines can be long, sounds sensible!