Broomieknowe Gardens, Lasswade

After a week of unending rain and thunderstorms the sky appeared a bit brighter today so us intrepid garden visitors (that's John and I!) set off to visit yet more gardens under the Scottish open gardens scheme. Fortunately we were not so foolheardy as to leave our umbrellas at home and they came in very handy for the occasional downpour. However cream tea in a gorgeous conservatory more than made up for that..

This time we visited  a group of gardens that was open in the conservation area of Broomieknowe in Lasswade. They were all lovely but one was magnificent. I reckon it must be around 3 acres or so and it was divided up into lots of garden rooms. The planting was wild and higgledy piggledy. There were weathered old benches, rusty garden equipment, latticed lanterns, little bridges over overgrown streams, and, joy of joys, even a children's play house called Blueberry Cottage, surrounded by it's very own cottage garden. Oh who was lucky enough to live in a place like that! The picture at the top became my blip for today. The romance of it all quite took my breath away. Even calling it a fairytale cottage doesn't do it justice

 

The flowers too were beautiful and so much further ahead than ours even though Lasswade is less than 1/2 hour away by car. But it's much lower down and closer to the river so the climate is totally different from our 900ft high hill.

The poppies were in full bloom although adorned with raindrops and I looked and photographed in wonder at it all. Somehow I feel closer to myself in a garden, prone to introspection, specially if it is quiet which this one was due to the weather. There is just so much pure beauty to be found in flowers and I lose myself within them.

It's strange to think that had anyone told me when I was young(er!) that I would be such an avid garden visitor I wouldn't have believe a word of it! The photography though is something that has always be with me.

And sometimes I like to push my camera beyond where it wants to go. Fortunately this camera does protest and tells me it's not on but unlike my previous model I can still make it take that picture and I end up with something that looks like the above photograph where my lens was only about 1 cm from the poppy centre. It might not be the sharpest but oh the wonderful details it has managed to capture.

Whoever made the garden must have been very fond of irises and that's a taste I share with them. Sadly they only flower here at Macbiehill when we have a very sunny and warm spring and that means we won't be seeing them this year! So it was extra special to see a large collection of them in this garden in all kinds of gorgeous colours. There is so much texture too hidden inside this flower's heart.

Irises are called after the Iris, the Greek goddess of the rainbow and were the flowers that inspired the fleur de lys symbol, so beloved of the French kings. Different coloured irises mean different things in the language of flowers. Blue ones stand for faith and hope and yellow ones for passion.

 Not sure what these brown peachy ones are saying apart from how beautiful they are.

as is this cream flower melting into peach, with a radiating yellow centre. How could I possible decide which is my favourite. Greedily I love them all.

and finally there was a wealth of clematis around (seen above and at the top of the flower pics), in all different colours, shapes and sizes. In fact most were almost over but this purple beauty was still in full flow with the flowers. You'll be able to see how wet it was by the many raindrops in the photographs, but I wouldn't have missed this visit for the world.