Travel Stories: English Gardens Tour (3)

(This is the third in a series about the English Gardens Tour I led from May 16-27, 2018. Remember that you can click on any of the photos to view a larger image.)

At noon on May 16th, we met up with my tour group at Spokane International Airport, full of excited anticipation about the coming days. After so many months of preparation, was it possible the trip was finally about to begin?

The down side of traveling from Spokane, Washington to London is that you tend to lose a day getting there. We flew from Spokane to Denver, and then on to London — arriving at Heathrow the following day at about 9:30 in the morning.

In addition to that, the particularly stressful part was that the flight schedule given to us by United Airlines gave us a mere 50-minute turn-around time between landing in Denver and taking off for London. That just didn’t even seem possible. I kept thinking, “I will be able to relax once we’re on that second flight!” Fortunately, the first flight landed about 15 minutes ahead of time, and the second flight took off nearly an hour later than scheduled. Major sigh of relief!

However, there was another hurdle to overcome. When you land in another country, it’s typical to go through Immigration and Customs before you can continue on to your destination. Bill and I have been through that routine in Heathrow many a time, and it’s usually a pretty speedy process.

Well, guess what? A certain prince and his fiance were getting married two days later (yup, Harry and Meghan!) and that bogged down the trip through Immigration to a crawl. I have never seen so many people in that huge room before and it took our group nearly 2 hours to make their way through. Just what you want to do after a long day of travel (not).

When I made my way to the arrivals hall, that ordeal was quickly replaced by relief and joy at seeing our tour escort, Cosetta Zanobetti, standing there holding a “Susan’s in the Garden” sign! What a kick to see that in print, LOL. We greeted each other warmly — like long-lost friends — and she was stunned to hear how long the Immigration and Customs process took.

Once everyone made it, we all headed out to our private coach which was a most welcome sight. Even though we were all exhausted, the fact that we had officially made it to London and were on our very own bus lifted our spirits. Soon, we were on the road, heading to Waterperry Gardens.

Now for some background on this marvelous garden:

The School of Horticulture for Women was located here from 1932 to 1971. Beatrix Havergal established the school after World War I as a way for women to learn a skill that would lead to employment opportunities. Waterperry Gardens is on 8 acres. Interesting features include a rock garden, long herbaceous border, a foliage border, alpine gardens, a formal garden, arboretum, rose garden, an allotment garden (which we know as a community garden), the waterlily canal, and riverside walk. There’s also a 100-year-old orange tree house which originally inspired Beatrix to establish her horticultural school.

The Museum of Rural Life houses a collection of ancient tools and implements, medieval pottery, veterinary tools and so on. There is also a curator on hand to answer questions. There’s even a garden shop — which is always a fun place to find garden-related goodies to take home — and a plant center (which we all had to resist!), an art gallery with contemporary arts and crafts, and a tea shop.

Our visit to the garden:

We began with a light lunch in the Waterperry Tea Shop, which perked all of us up after our long flight. Then we headed into the gardens to explore. I never saw so many happy faces each time I ran into members of our group. I could tell they loved the garden.

Photos from our visit:

Yes, we timed our trip perfectly to the blooming of the wisteria!

  

  

   

   

And last but not least, four flowers that I absolutely loved:

Rose – ‘Hansa’

Tree Peony – ‘Ludlowii’

Camas Lily (Camassia) leichtlinii ‘Alba’

Allium – ‘Purple Sensation’

So that’s the report on Waterperry Gardens.

After that, we had another hour to drive before getting to our first hotel where we stayed for 3 nights: Old Swan & Minster Mill in Minster Lovell. As you can see by the next photo, it was absolutely charming and everyone was delighted with their rooms. The food in their restaurant was excellent and the service equally wonderful. As you would guess, we all slept like logs that first night!

That covers the first full day of our trip. And don’t worry: this should be the only really long blog post about it! I hope you enjoyed it.