Those of you who have followed me for a while will know that I am passionate about flowers, nature and gardens. In fact I even have a blog dedicated to them. Earth Laughs in Flowers is no longer being updated but it is a resource of my garden visits from around the world. Wherever I travel I seek out a garden.
“My garden is all overblown with roses,
My spirit is all overblown with rhyme”
~ Vita Sackville-West
So what can I say in a single post? What do gardens mean to me?
A lot of the pleasure of a garden of one’s own is nurturing the plants through their lives. Sowing seeds, watching them grow, making sure they have the right conditions, changing them if not. It’s a lot like having children or pets. You make mistakes. You learn. And when things go well, it makes you happy. And when they don’t you try again.
(Please click on an image to enlarge / scroll through the gallery)
Details
I like to visit other gardens for many reasons. Combining a walk in pleasant surroundings is one. Having a nosey around small gardens to pick up ideas of what might work in my own is another. Large estates often have stunning vistas too. Then there are the design features, colour combinations to copy, unusual plants to admire, tiny details picked up through the camera lens, a walled garden, a fragrant garden, an edible garden, a secret garden to explore, gardens to relax in and listen to nature: mindfulness.
Colours to admire
Design Ideas to inspire
Vistas
Somewhere to relax
The last words come from my favourite garden designer who says it much better than I can.
“I try for beauty and harmony everywhere, and especially for harmony of colour. A garden so treated gives the delightful feeling of repose, and refreshment, and purest enjoyment of beauty, that seems to my understanding to be the best fulfilment of its purpose; while to the diligent worker its happiness is like the offering of a constant hymn of praise.
For I hold that the best purpose of a garden is to give delight and to give refreshment of mind, to soothe, to refine, and to lift up the heart in a spirit of praise and thankfulness.”
~ Gertrude Jekyll (Wood and Garden)
Lens- Artists Photo Challenge #311 | What’s in a Garden
TRAVEL WORDS 
Even though I don’t have a personal garden any longer, I still admire others’ efforts. Once a gardener, I think that love of plants and trees never leaves. Especially us with green fingers. Gorgeous selection of gardens, Jude. We’ve planted a ginko. I loved its autumn colours.
Gardens bring so much to our lives including colour and scent. Ginkgos are wonderful in autumn with their buttery yellow leaves. A bit big for my small garden though.
A beautiful post, and one which seems to describe so well why you are such a garden-lover. Your Sissinghurst photos are especially lovely. I need to visit!
I thoroughly recommend at least a week in Kent / East Sussex. So many fab gardens. Sissinghurst, Great Dixter, Bates. In fact check out my resource page on the garden blog!
Bateman’s!
Will do Yes, we need to explore the south a bit more.
A fabulous post Jude. So many wonderful photos of flowers and gardens, a gardeners feast thank you
My pleasure BB. Hard to know what to choose, so I decided to go with gardens I have visited this year.
Great choices 🥰
Fabulous, Jude! I’m not much good at sewing seeds and nurturing (same as my parenting skills!) but I do love to wander and admire, and just sitting on the patio beside them brings joy.
I find it hard to sew seeds too. Fiddly little things 😂. Joking aside it’s not my favourite aspect of gardening and mostly doomed to failure.
😁🩷
I love how you organised your stunning photos, it’s like a wonderful story.
Oh, thanks Sofia. There are just so many elements to a garden that I thought it would be easier to organise my photos to pick out a few of the things I enjoy.
A beautiful post Jude, I’ve enjoyed following you in your garden and when you visit other gardens. You always show us the beauty you find through your photos. This post is one of your best and the quotes capture that magical feeling that a garden gives me.
Thanks Pauline, it’s lovely to know how much you enjoy my posts. I think GJ’s quote sums up well what garden can mean.
Great post, Jude…Particularly enjoyed your images from gardens visited
Thanks Sue. We were able to visit a few new (and one old) gardens while we were away in Wiltshire in early June, luckily the weather stayed mainly fine! Though I was hobbling around due to my injured foot.
Can’t help but admire the overgrown landscape at Sissinghurst Castle Garden. Stunning photos by the way.
Thank you.
That’s quite a compendium you’ve put together.
I do my bit 😁
Every photo is wonderful in its own way, but I find myself in absolute awe at the sheer scale of the herbaceous border at Mottisfont.
Yes. That is one impressive walled garden! And such beautiful fragrant old roses too.
Blissful old roses.