Old Town Open Gardeners' Tour

 Those taking part in Old Town Open Gardens have a great time taking visitors round their gardens on the open gardens day, but are keen to look at everyone else's gardens to discuss their ideas and gain an idea of the visitor's experience. In previous years, we have allocated an evening to whizz round all the gardens; this has been rushed and not as much fun as this year's visits, which we decided to spread over 2 evenings. I took some fairly random photos of the two evenings as a reminder of how wonderfully varied the gardens taking part were. Gardening is such a personal activity, how do we make our gardens? Harriet Gross seems to have written about the beneficial effects of gardening, they are well documented. I'm interested in how gardens reflect our personality, is there anything written about that? There is a book which claims there are 12 gardening styles, some people might pick a style and go with that. I'm not sure if our group of gardeners have done that.

We visited 4 gardens each night, and for various reasons not everyone who had opened their garden came with us. I'm starting with a photo I like, of Holly among her raised beds in her vegetable garden explaining something to us.

I'll now go back to the order we visited the gardens. We started with Laura's garden where we noted the wonderful new features introduced since some of us last visited. I haven't managed to capture some of the fabulous plants in her garden, getting distracted by the succulent boat theatre,

and then this group of succulents, some of which I don't have!!

and how is this Echeveria flowering so freely just now?

From there we walked to Cindy and Denis's and admired the fabulous Abutilon to the left of the front door

and in the back garden, there's a beautiful Aeonium Zwartkop, in beautiful condition.

From there we walked along to Holly's garden, passing the beautiful Mill Lane Community gardeners raised bed which looks fantastic.

There was lots of interest in the greenhouse where Holly had a collection of bird cage planters which I hadn't realised were a 'thing', but now know they are.

A great collection of succulents

Once out of the greenhouse, there are lots more fascinating things to see. This nook where a table and 2 chairs had been placed was lovely

as was the tantalising view walking down form the vegetable beds.

I love this slightly dilapidated summerhouse, it's worth having structures in the garden, even when they are getting a bit doddery

Finally, above here's an almost close up of the formal flower beds. We were so long looking round the first 3 gardens, we were a bit late arriving at our final garden where candles had been lit, giving an absolutely magical air to our final visit of the evening.

I love this Caribbean style shed seen below behind the pond with what looks like flying goldfish above it, they are in fact of course, daylilies! I

Another relaxed photo of some of the group

and another view

Finally I really liked this small structure with plants in, and beautifully lit up.

So that's the end of the first four garden visits, what have a I learnt? I really like succulents, individual features in gardens, it's the small things that I'm drawn to in a garden.