Through a hedge into The Secret Garden

* I was provided a pair of tickets to the Gardeners’ World Spring Fair and therefore are marking posts from my visit as 'Ad’ - as usual my views and opinions are very much my own.

The Secret Garden by Hillier was a central feature of this year’s Spring Fair, inspired by The Secret Garden. It promised to be enclosed by high hedges, and the entrance was through part of this hedge, the design was said to encourage visitors to get up close and personal with the plants displayed, and that was the case, as much as you can at these kind of events.

Unsurprisingly it was a popular feature of the show and it was pretty busy when we visited but generally people gave each other space to enjoy and explore the garden which was absolutely full of plants.

On the right as we entered was the border containing the Himalayan Birch trees and hostas, which was getting much less attention than the border opposite. This area was designed to be more contemporary and included the low-maintenance brilliant white trunked trees. The hostas among the trees represented a ‘sea of foliage’ as a contrast to the colours opposite.

It was nice, but quite understated and in complete contrast to the larger section of the garden, which as you can see, was a lot more interesting.

The border full of herbaceous perennials and shrubs start with whites and purples and go through the spectrum of colours, the idea for the design was to move through the softer, delicate colours to intense and vibrant shades to depict the sun’s movement during the day.

One of the plants stealing the show was the bright pink Judas tree - isn’t it stunning? I think we’ll see more of these, and I’ve already spotted that some of the RHS Chelsea gardens are using them. I know I’d be happy to have one in my garden!

Along the back border the colours changed to the more intense and vibrant colours, with fiery reds and oranges and yellows, representing a bright sunset, and a beautiful end to the day.

Looking back at these photos it’s much more obvious than I remember at the time, though this is most likely because of sharing the space with more people than you would normally share a garden with, so it was much harder to look at the garden as a whole. However the photos allow that, and the planting is really rather special.

My other hot tip is shallow pots complete with pebbles and water - we saw these in more than one garden at the Spring Fair, and it’s something that’s easy to replicate at home, so I think we’ll see more simple water features in our gardens, and that can only be a good thing.

Rhododendrons and rocks at Exbury Gardens

* I was provided a pair of tickets to Exbury Gardens & Steam Railway and therefore are marking posts from my visit as 'Ad’ - as usual my views and opinions are very much my own.

We stopped off at Exbury Gardens on our way down to the New Forest, which for us in South London is about a two and a half hour journey, though the traffic app warns it could be anywhere up to four hours. We were lucky and had a really good, and uneventful trip down, which is just what you want really isn’t it?

It was our first time visiting Exbury, and we were keen to get out of the car to stretch our legs and to see for ourselves what was on offer.

Spoiler: I took lots of photos, way too many for a single post and so I’ll split these into more manageable chunks. And yes, I know that’s not much of a spoiler at all is it, it’s mostly the norm!

Exbury Gardens & Steam Railway, to give it its proper name, is as its name suggests in Exbury, Hampshire. It has 200 acres of informal woodlands and was created by Lionel de Rothschild in 1919 and still managed by the family today. It’s famous for its displays of rhododendrons, azaleas and camellias with large collections, which are not only plentiful but also full of colour.

I wasn’t disappointed.

There were pinks of every shade you could imagine - the one above caught my eye as it was so vibrant and solitary, looking almost ‘bird of paradise’ like, but it wasn’t the only one. There’s over 800 types of rhododendron (which comes from the Greek ‘rhodos’ meaning rose and ‘dendron’ meaning tree) which are spread around the globe.

Here at Exbury Lionel de Rothschild relied on nurserymen from around the world to send him interesting plants, one of which went on to become the most famous post-war species and parent or grandparent to a host of compact plants suitable for smaller gardens.

I’m never one to pass on a photo opportunity of some lichen, you know how much I liken the lichen - but this one’s a real beauty!

And just when you think it can’t get any better there’s bushes and bushes of azaleas too which are truly stunning, the colours even more vibrant than those of the camellias and the rhododendrons we’d already seen.

We’d spotted the Rock Garden from our trip on the train - perfectly named the Rhododendron Line - and as all rock gardens should, its entrance was marked with a rock.

Here the planting changed, but we weren’t totally without the rhododendrons. The two acre garden was created in the late 1920s but fell into disrepair as a result of the war becoming overgrown and neglected. It was restored and replanted with dwarf rhododendrons and conifers in the 1970s which reached maturity some thirty years later. As with every garden, there’s always work to be done and this garden is no different and is currently undergoing a programme of rejuvenation.

And with the different planting, as you’d expect the garden had a totally different feel. It was calmer, and more relaxing - though that may also have been down to the speed (or lack of) that we explored the space. There were paths leading up and down and around, which including using the large rocks to navigate through the space - nothing too strenuous, but so, so worth it.

Having explored the rock garden and marvelled at how such spaces are created we left to immerse ourself in the colour elsewhere in the garden. In future posts I’ll share more about our trip on the steam train, the trees throughout the garden and the sundial garden - but in the meantime I’ll leave you with the deepest crimson rhododendron, the most glorious coloured one I think I’ve ever seen, and a wall of azaleas which provides the perfect photo stop.

I’d heard good things about Exbury Gardens before our visit, and as I said at the start of this post, I wasn’t disappointed.

With thanks to Exbury Gardens & Steam Railway who provided a pair of tickets for entry. All views and opinions are very much my own.

Looking ahead to the Gardeners' World Spring Fair and more

* I have been provided a pair of tickets to the Gardeners’ World Spring Fair, and also for entry to Exbury Gardens & Steam Railway from Gardeners’ World and Exbury Gardens respectively, therefore all posts from these visits will be marked as 'Ad’ though as usual my views and opinions are very much my own.

All of a sudden, it’s next week. I hope those that are exhibiting are a lot more on top of things than I am, otherwise it won’t be much of a show at all…

I’m fully expecting to return with many, many photos and information to share - and I can’t wait. It’ll be good to visit a part of the country we haven’t been to for a while. We used to have a favourite place with self-catering lodges just outside Ringwood that we went to a few times, but things change, and the small independently run spot closed. I think we last visited the New Forest back in 2011, before I even started blogging, but not quite in the physical photo era. I’m sure lots has changed, but I’m also sure lots will have stayed the same.

At the Spring Fair

It’ll be my first time visiting the Gardeners’ World Spring Fair, I’ve been to Gardeners’ World Live in Birmingham a couple of times and it’s always a brilliant day out, so I’m expecting this one to be just as good, and just as inspiring as well as tiring. I’m especially looking forward to:

• The Hillier Secret Garden: inspired by The Secret Garden, a walk-through garden enclosed by high hedges and containing colour-coordinated plants and shrubs portraying the movement of the sun during a spring day. It already sounds magical.

• Paul Stone’s showcase garden Theatre of Greens: the garden will be packed with veg and edible plants, alongside a programme of daily talks hosted by Chris Bavin and feature ‘grow your own’ gurus. I do like a spot of edible growing, though have done very little of this since our house has been on the market, which makes admiring someone else’s work even more enjoyable.

• All of the Beautiful Borders which offer inspiration for small gardens and challenging spaces, the theme is ‘My Garden Escape’, and as I said before this is the part of the shows where MOH despairs of me, I like to see them all and can be quite methodical about making sure I have seen everything. And I mean literally everything.

• Budget-friendly gardens: I’m looking forward to seeing the budget-friendly gardens the horticultural students will create under the expert eye of mentor Cherry Carmen, the award-winning garden designer, a Gold Award at BBC Gardeners’ World Live.

I’m sure we’ll also spend some time time checking out the talks and information available from the Gardeners’ World Live Stage. I know that Frances Tophill is due to be at the show on Friday, so I’ll be looking out for her, and of course the BBC Good Food Market is also taking place, and we’d be foolish to resist that.

Plus two new-to-me gardens to visit

As well as all of that, the Spring Fair is held at Beaulieu so all of their attractions are available too. Hopefully we’ll have the time (and energy) to see the grounds and gardens - at the top of my list is the Victorian Kitchen Garden and Alice’s Adventure in Wonderland Topiary, as I am rather partial to both of these. No doubt, we’ll try to visit as many of the gardens as we can, and make time to see the National Motor Museum. It seems I’m also a closet petrol-head, as we’ve also visited motor museums in Munich (BMW World) and in the Lake District (the Lakeland Motor Museum), both of which are fantastic. For some reason, neither of those visits have made it here, I’m not sure why - maybe I’ll do something about that at some point!

The other new-to-me garden is Exbury Gardens & Steam Railway which celebrates ‘more than 100 years of horticultural excellence’. The gardens were created by Lionel de Rothschild in 1919 and still managed by the family today. It’s famous for its displays of rhododendrons, azaleas and camellias, so hopefully we will be able to see them starting to bloom, as I suspect they may not be quite as advanced this year with the chilly and wet spring we seem to be having.

I also hope to check in on the wisteria in the Sundial Garden but I’m not sure if we’ll get the full wisteria experience, we may be a month too early. And while I’m a closet petrol-head, MOH likes a railway or two - we brought home track, engines and all sorts from his childhood railway adventures, which he assures me will be on eBay at some point. So he's especially interested in the Steam Railway, the Rhododendron Line (let’s hope he doesn’t spend the day calling it the RosieDendron Line, though I’m not holding my breath), with its three engines and ten carriages all named after the Rothschild family. The railway meanders through the garden, and steams through a tunnel modelled on the famous Gothic folly, the Clayton Tunnel is West Sussex, which MOH seemed knowledgeable about when I shared this info, I told you he liked a railway or two!

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

So while there’s plenty on our list already to be keeping us busy, what else would you add? It doesn’t have to be garden related, I think we might be in garden overload if we add more! And I know the New Forest has plenty more to see and visit.

* With thanks in advance to both Gardeners’ World and Exbury Gardens & Steam Railway for providing entry tickets to your event and gardens.