Hyde Hall RHS Garden Plant Fair

Just a week after visiting Wisley with Mary, my RHS membership card was being flashed again - this time at Hyde Hall and, this time, with Mum. 

We'd barely got out of the car and into the garden, before we were making notes of plants we fancied in our own gardens!  And the bonus of today was that a plant fair was in full swing, with lots of different plant nurseries in attendance selling their wares.  Uh oh! However, deciding that we really ought to wander around the gardens first before getting down to some retail therapy, we spent a few hours exploring.

One of my favourite parts of the garden centred around the ferns - I love ferns!  I know they're not everyone's cup of tea, but I think I'd be happy with a woodland garden, as long as I had some flowering stuff in with it - primroses, forget-me-nots, bluebells, cyclamen, wild garlic, etc.

We were very taken with the rose garden - notwithstanding that none of the roses were in bloom!  However, it was the fixings we were very impressed with - stakes and trellis placed at regular spacings with simple rope linking them for the roses to grow along.  What a brilliant idea!  (We even took photos of the knots to show Dad and Andy how we wanted them to tie it!)

Having explored the gardens thoroughly and being alarmed at the sight of hundreds of people pulling along wheelie crates full of plants, we thought we'd better go and do some shopping while there were still some plants left to buy!

We didn't do too badly!