Megan got me started with this talk of “The Februarys” and pining for Spring, and Andrea Pickens didn’t help by talking about traveling to Scotland and Ireland.
I’m yearning for Springtime in England. It has been three years since I’ve seen England and that is way too long. I won’t be there this year, though, but I went so far as to do a search on Garden Tours of England.
The first up is Coopersmith’s One of a Kind Tours
British Isles
Springtime in the Cotswolds
the Malvern Gardening Show
Scottish Highlands & Islands
the Chelsea Flower Show
Springtime in Ireland: Gardens, Castles & Landscapes (This one is their special of the month)
North Yorkshire Gardens, Country Inns & Stately Homes & Gardens
Haunts of English Artists, Writers and Horticulturists
Next is Lucas and Randall Tour the Gardens of Europe.
Alas their website says “Lucas and Randall is no longer accepting reservations for the 2008 season.” Now I think I’ve missed something!
There is plenty to select from Lynott Tours, though. The one that interests me most is “Chelsea Garden Show with Visits to Kent and Sussex,” but that is because they say there is only one space left!
Sigh.
I think I’ll go on a virtual tour, revisiting gardens we saw on my 2005 visit to England, the Romantic Road North Tour. Wanna come with me?
(I may not have the correct garden attached to the correct estate, so feel free to correct me)
Buckingham Palace – we started our tour in London, naturally. On our walk past Buckingham Palace we saw Prince Charles and Camilla leaving in a limo. Prince Charles waved to us.
Grimsthorpe Castle – this is a view from a window of the castle
Knebworth House – so many beautiful flowers here
Chatsworth – again a view from a window. Indescribably beautiful! 
Haddon Hall – this medevial house was a big contrast to Chatsworth, but its gardens were wild and gorgeous
Beningbrough Hall – lots of gardens here
Norton Conyers – one of my favorite places on the tour. Still a private house, it is thought to be Charlotte Bronte’s model for Thornfield. It is known that she visited the house and the family recently discovered a windowless room in the attic where a madwoman might have lived.
Duncombe Park – a view of a very formal garden
Floors Castle – lots of beautiful flowers here
Edinburgh – no garden but a beautiful view!
Where in the world would you like to be this Spring?
Are you planning a garden this year? What will you plant?
There is still time to enter my contest to win a copy of Kathryn Caskie’s How to Seduce a Duke and my The Mysterious Miss M. Enter Here
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My thumb is not the only thing that is green with envy over your trip to England as depicted in all of those lovely photos! I love formal gardens, English gardens, cottage gardens, you name it. I recently received a lovely postcard from Anna Campbell of the Royal Botanical Gardens in Sydney. Now in addition to a longing for the arrival of spring I am suffering from travel envy!
I spend a lot of time trying to beat my five acres into submission. I am doing one section as an English garden and another as a Japanese garden. It is a slow process.
I have HUGE azaleas as I have let them run wild. Some are over 7 feet tall and 10 feet wide. I have some magnificent rhododendron as well, all because someone told me they would not grow in this heat.
My problem is I don’t have enough time for my gardening or my writing. Working for a living is a real time consumer!!
Oh hyacinth bulbs! I have put a ton of them in for this Spring. I LOVE them.
“My problem is I don’t have enough time for my gardening or my writing. Working for a living is a real time consumer!!”
Pamela, I am in total agreement! I wish my day job would quit being so demanding (they want me to come in every day or they won’t pay me–imagine! LOL), so I can write, read, and try to get my back yard in spring shape all the time. I don’t have five acres, but I have a nice little space I want to do more with (have been making little elevated patches for vegetables lately, so the dogs won’t eat them).
If I had unlimited time/funds, I would make it a little English garden, with pathways and arbors.
Those tours look fabulous!
Ha ha, Amanda and O Doggie One, I have just a bit of front yard with azaleas and some jonquils (budding!!) and two neglected rose bushes. I’d love for someone to turn this in to an English garden.
I can’t imaging 5 acres! But I love azaleas grown wild. Do not like them sculpted as we must do in front. And rhododenron? Sigh.
I can’t remember spring in England being as lovely as spring in the Washington DC area, which happens very slowly and subtly. Or maybe it’s just from living in Colorado for ten years where you’d have daffodils one week and roses the next.
Doglady, I too used to garden a lot–and then I started writing. So most of my gardening is defoliation (because as well as the lovely springs we have many unlovely vines). And we are plagued with squirrels which eat most bulbs except daffodils–I do, or rather, did have a few windflowers and old-style (small) tulips last year–have to see what made it through the winter.
I’m plagued by squirrels, too, Janet — hate the creatures!
I do wish I could do more gardening — or, rather, have more of a garden — but I’m in a condo, with just a balcony on which I can grow some potted plants.
And those plants which can survive 105 degrees F in the summer, and near freezing in the winter, tend to get butchered by the demon squirrels. (If they don’t dig them up, they shred them. Why???)
I am currently nursing a lovely little cactus. (One of my five surviving plants.) After the squirrels shredded it, I’ve kept it inside for several months, and it’s lovely now…but every day there’s less sun indoors, and so today I put it outside again, crossing fingers and toes that by tonight it isn’t dead.
Cara
(who’d love to exterminate the beasts — at least on my balcony)
“Oh to be in England now that spring is here…” It’s been 22 years since I was there, and there are times… I wish I had appreciated it more and taken the opportunity to see more! The folly of youth. Thanks, Diana, for sharing these gorgeous photos and wonderful reminders of the beauty there.
I dabbled in gardening for a few years, veggies mostly, but lost hope after the second and third year when these icky bugs laid siege and decimated the squash and then the tomatoes and finally everything else. I tried a couple of different poisons to no avail. All for the best, I suppose. 🙂
~~Judy T
Diane, you’re making me sigh for spring! I’m ready! Right now I’m just enjoying my daffodils and lilies of the valley.
We had such a beautiful Spring day here today. 68 degrees and sunny.
Janet, I was so missing England that I forgot how beautiful Spring is here in DC. The Cherry Blossom, Forsythia, Dogwood, azaleas, and all the bulbs. It is truly gorgeous.
Deb, you must be a week or two ahead of us in the flower department. I hope we don’t turn cold again!
I’ll actually be making a brief trip to England at the beginning of April. Just to London, though, and mostly working, so I doubt I’ll see many gardens! Maybe I’ll walk through St. James’s Park, though.
Todd-who-always-looks-forward-to-traveling-until-he-actually-has-to-do-it
Wow, those are gorgeous gardens! I love spring flowers, but our house is one of the “black thumb of death” so no lovely gardens outside our home! We barely keep the ground cover alive, thanks to the gardener!
Lovely pictures, Diane, and Spring is coming, I’ve been told.
Go flowers!
We have yet to see daffodils here, Diane, so these beautiful pictures of gardens was a lovely sight indeed!!
I like those wildish English gardens with under-plantings and over-plantings, as opposed to the highly manicured, sculpted ones.
A quick book note… I was thrilled to see eHarlequin still selling copies of Diane’s VV and Amanda’s book is already available. w00t! Got my copy of “Rogue” coming.
A quick book note… I was thrilled to see eHarlequin still selling copies of Diane’s VV and Amanda’s book is already available. w00t! Got my copy of “Rogue” coming.
I checked last week and the site said VV was sold out, but it doesn’t say that now. They must have gotten some more!
I love those wild English gardens, too.
You remind me my trip to England 3 years ago. I visited all famous London’s sightseeing, such as the Big Bang, London Eye, Westminster Abbey and others. We had a nice boat trip on Themes and even excursion on Limo London around the city. It was wonderful. I really liked London, but my first impression of London that it is so noisy there. My second, little boxes. I know that London is one of the greenest cities in the world. The eight Royal Parks alone add up to 5,000 acres. I really enjoyed my trip.