A tale of two gardens

I went visiting another couple of private gardens, opened to raise money for charity under the National Gardens Scheme. They were in neighbouring villages but couldn't have been more different. 

The one in the photo above was relatively modest plot around quite a modern house in Silsden. It was laid out with lush, undulating borders around a lawn, and with some attractive paved seating areas around the house itself. With varied foliage and some statement blooms, it was an inspiration to see how the owners had created a stunning garden in an average sized plot. Dotted here and there were some nice sculptures. You might be able to see a hen and its chick by the edge of the lawn, made of crushed wire.

The second garden (below) was much bigger: the grounds of an old stone manor house called High Hall, Steeton. The present building dates back to the late 1600s and was built by the Currer family. I have read that Charlotte Brontë's pen name, Currer Bell, was inspired by the name of this family and the bell at the south entrance of the house. There's also a legend that the seven Steeton men who fought in the Battle of Flodden, between the Scots and the English in 1513, cut their long-bows from a yew tree that still exists in this garden.  

The Arts and Crafts influenced walled gardens here were more formal and symmetrical, with herbaceous borders abundant with pink, white and purple blooms - peonies, alliums and iris among them. There was a pond, a belvedere and a dovecote, an adjacent walled vegetable garden and an area of woodland too. Absolutely gorgeous. 

Beacon Hill House

Since 1927, the National Garden Scheme has encouraged the owners of exceptional private gardens to open to the public on one or two days a year to raise money for charities. Over £50 million has been donated, from admission fees and plant sales. I picked up a booklet showing all the gardens open this year in Yorkshire and (now that I'm a lady of leisure) I am going to enjoy visiting a few of the more local ones.

Beacon Hill House sits high up on the moors between Ilkley and Bolton Abbey. Its open day coincided with one of our first very warm and sunny days of the year but much of the steep plot of about seven acres is woodland, so there was plenty of shade. The house was built in 1848 by a businessman, Benjamin Briggs Popplewell, who chose the 1000ft high location hoping that the bracing, clean air might cure his consumptive child. (I don't know whether it did!) The original gardens were more formal and exposed than what exists today but there are traces of Victorian arches, walls, follies and a rather splendid Gothic dog kennel.

It has not been a good Spring for gardens. The magnolias were badly browned by frost and a recent spell of very dry weather has left many plants looking parched and weak. There were some rhododendrons in flower but some were past their best and the herbaceous plants are not yet flowering. The daffodils are over, though the woods were full of bluebells. The house has a pretty orchard and some of the trees had blossom. I love seeing trees coming into leaf, all maturing at different rates too. There were some attractive coppery tones among the spring greens.

Snowdrop gardens

The gardens at Goldsborough Hall are known locally for their display of snowdrops in February and are open on just two Sundays for public viewing. On the first Sunday this year there was more snow around than snowdrops, so I chose to visit the second Sunday. It was a day that promised sunshine but, in the end, disappointed, even though it was quite mild. The massed snowdrops are very pretty though I think I prefer them when they are interplanted with more colourful species like the hellebores below.