Shilton Gardens Open

It was a much sunnier day today and so we decided to visit Shilton village as their gardens were open to the public. Shilton is only a couple of miles up the road from us and being only a few miles from Burford is quite Cotswolds in feel. There is honey coloured stone everywhere and lots of dry stone walls and streams.

I love visiting these ordinary gardens even more than the public one's (although there wasn't much that was ordinary about these gardens), there's nothing like permissible nosiness. I only wish they could have 'National Bookshelf Schemes' where you could just wander in people's houses and rummage amongst their books, with their blessing of course.

Not everyone opens their garden, but you usually get a map and in any case there is a sign on each gate if the garden is open. If you live in the area, it's always a good way of finding out what grows well in the soil or what plant's look good together. As usual I came home with more plant ideas to put on the wishlist (opium and oriental poppies for a start.) Most of the gardens were enormous, I could fit mine fifty times over in them. There were lot's of orchards, knot gardens and veggie patches that were straight out of 'Country Life', as well as some inspired borders. One garden had a teddy bears picnic going on in their orchard.


Although we stopped for tea and cake yesterday, and really that should have been our quota exceeded for at least another week, we felt we had to make another refreshment stop. Firstly it was so hot outside that we needed a rest and some sustenance, and secondly they had gone to so much effort, proper tea in bone china cups and lot's of homemade cakes, that we felt it would be rude not to partake. There were gorgeous little touches like bunting and garden flower posies on each table.

There really are few things you can do on a sunny Sunday afternoon that are nicer than this. I saw so many beautiful gardens and sat on so many gorgeous benches thinking how lovely it must be to live in such tranquil surroundings (it cost's nothing to dream, mentally I had myself curled up with a book in practically everyone's orchard). One of the things I saw, that was markedly different from the last time I looked around these gardens, was an increase in wild gardens and meadows, so that was encouraging. Lot's of bird feeders, tables and nesting boxes too.




A perfect sunny Sunday in the country, we came back green with envy as we always do, but inspired also. A garden doesn't have to be big to be beautiful after all.