Visiting RHS Rosemoor in June

 All RHS gardens are fabulously inspiring, with tremendous attention to detail wherever you look, and Rosemoor in north Devon is no exception. These photos are taken during the June Garden Tour, so are a reminder of what you can see in June rather than now. We were lucky enough to visit when the meadows were awash with early purple spotted orchids, you can see them in the photo below.

I was interested in how they have achieved this lovely look at Rosemoor, and photographed the 3 panels, they had there explaining their process. It's quite time consuming, plugs planted one year seem to take two years to look like they're thriving. I have found this certainly applied to wild carrot and ox eye daisies at the rewilding sites round here. I think the magic ingredient we are missing however is yellow rattle, we have some very poor soils round here on the site of the old railway, but even so, they would benefit from the addition of yellow rattle.

The thing you notice about Rosemoor is that there are always improvements and alterations going on, the gardens are never quite the same. Below, a new structure is being built, wouldn't one of those be wonderful in the garden? 

I've now chosen a few of my highlights from the visit, you can look at Rosemoor's ideas of their highlights from their website.

Dark lettuces can be grown to dramatic effect in the vegetable garden, note the complete lack of weeds

Above two colours of lettuces were planted to celebrate the Queen's Jubilee. It was hard to get it all in, there's a crown at the top, then 'E 11 R' and 'Jubilee'

In one of the greenhouses there were some cucumbers, even then wilting under the extreme heat

There's a learning centre at Rosemoor, this is a sculpture on the side of one of the classrooms, it stands out beautifully

I took some general photos of the gardens

I thought they looked good from a distance

then as ever I focussed in on particular plants which were growing really well, like this Clematis and rose combo in one of the rose gardens

and just look at this Clematis below

There were some fantastic roses, this single flowered, climbing rose was fantastic, it didn't have a name I could see, but it was covetable

This rose is called 'For Your Eyes Only', I loved the two colours, and bought one which is now languishing in the heat in the back garden, I hope it survives.

Finally at the back of the vegetable garden Rosa 'Soldier Boy' was growing up a thatched building, I think I'm converted, roses can be beautiful. The gardens are a joy, it was hard to pull ourselves away, we were almost the last visitors there. I think there was one car left in the car park, we met those visitors the next day at Marwood Hill Gardens the next day!!