Aylett Nurseries: stage 1 of Garden Tour

 Last week, I went on a 4 night garden tour with friend Lyn, we didn't manage a trip away last year because of Covid, but we thought if we waited until this August, we might be OK to travel and stay in a B&B, and indeed it was a great trip. The downside was that there were masses of people everywhere, not only is it the school holidays, but many people are holidaying in the UK this year, so there were lots of queues for food and toilets! We went to Suffolk, staying at Church Farm, a fruit farm in Bradfield Combust, a few miles outside Bury St.Edmunds. As always, I took lots of photos of the gardens which I'll share over the next few blog posts.

There are 3 main routes shown from Swindon to Bradfield Combust, we took the southerly one via the M4 on the way there, stopping at Aylett Nurseries for lunch and as the first stage of the tour. Lyn was a bit sniffy about  stopping there because it seemed like a garden centre. Apart from managing to drive into a red bar and scraping the front of the car when I tried to park, it was excellent in every way, the food was tasty and came quickly and I was able to find a four pronged scraper I'd been looking for for years to replace one left in a garden somewhere. So yes, do go if you're in the area. 

They specialise in dahlias and have a garden area set aside to show a beautiful selection of them, as well as some rather fabulous long borders and a wild flower area.

The dahlias are all labelled and in rows as well as seen below, huge clumps

There's a huge range of dahlias and someone on their knees weeding them very carefully

There are maybe 5 long borders with grassy paths in between

They all looked good and gave good examples of perennials which could be grown together

Couldn't resist the bee on a flower

and a general photo of another border.

So a good start to the holiday.