Shepherd House Garden

After all the excitement yesterday it was time to take John for an outing and we paid our first garden visit of the year today as the weather was again great and the outdoors beckoned. These visits are with gardens open on selected dates as part of the Gardens of Scotland scheme. We regularly return to gardens we've visited before but today we ventured into a new to us garden at Shepherd House, Inveresk. And what a pleasure that proved to be.

Almost the first thing John spotted high up in a tree was the chapeau birdhouse as seen above. I have the distinct feeling that I will soon view hats in one or more of our trees too! Such an original idea. And hot on that I was the one to oh and ah over the next ingenious find. Someone had put a mirror underneath one of the hellebore plants so that the inside could be admired as well as the outside. Again such a simple thing to do but an inspired thought by someone.

The garden is walled and very sheltered which explains why so many plants were already in flower when they aren't even above the ground in our own garden. What heaven to see such glorious colours. I've been thirsting for that all winter long. We also managed to spend my left-over money (told you that wouldn't take long!!) in the shape of some marvelous metal plant supports topped with leaf shapes, made by Andrea Geile. One would have been lost so I decided we had to have at least 3! And needless to say I took a careful note of her website as I can easily imagine them growing into a little forest like you can see there.

The final wonderful photographic opportunity came when we left the garden to return to our car and I spotted the structure see below, which John thinks is part of the telephone system. It was almost completely overgrown with ivy and looked like a scupture.

It almost became my blip for today as did the hat, but in the end I could not resist using the one with the mirror and hellebore flower. Needless to say tea was drunk and cake was eaten, that's another pleasure associated with garden visiting!