Wow…. Garden Open Weekend 2015

Wow. What a weekend, it has been truly amazing. When we got up on Saturday morning it was already raining hard and had been all night, the garden looked sad, the wisteria had a limb practically lying on the ground and plants were also prostrate. Urgent attention was needed and quick. With the wisteria propped up temporarily, wet plants lifted out of legs way, we thought, know one in their right mind is going to turn up in this. How wrong we were…

The poor Wisteria after it’s propping up.

Our first visitors were Cathy and Mr Golfer from Rambling in the Garden, I thank them for coming all the way to see us in the pouring rain. Armed with hot coffee we had a wet walk around the garden and a catch up. Thinking this was going to be a slow day Mr Malc and I had our lunch and then, the visitors kept on coming. Wet and bedraggled these stalwarts trotted round the garden, asked questions, hopefully got the right answers and bought plants. Around 60 people came on Saturday. One couple, admittedly they were visiting family locally, came all the way from up state New York, I hope they weren’t too disappointed what with the weather. They did give me some nice feedback. Loving the roses and the perfume in the garden.

Nice couple from up state New York and a family member.

Still Saturday in the rain…

Sunday morning no rain and a bit brighter. Decided to put the bunting out and more signs etc, thinking this would be the better day. We got a bit worried for the first hour as only our friends arrived and some of our family. Then suddenly, that was it, the starting gate was open…..

Me in the middle with my back to you, chatting to Anne another blog follower who is creating a new garden from scratch…..

Such nice people…

For the next four hours we were full to capacity, there were folk every where, plants were rolling of the shelves and bags were filled. I was giving advise on anything from pruning wisteria to ‘how do you make your wire birds’ the questions kept coming and I was in my element.

We had some lovely visitors from whole families keen to know where to start with their plot to really knowledgeable folk whom I learned a lot from. I thank them all for coming, especially all those followers, be you Facebook or my blog followers, who all came to make this weekend truly great. We counted up and we had around 200 people through the gates on Saturday.  Thank you…

Some of the comments and questions I got …

‘I’ve never seen so many different bees in a garden’….

‘Where did you start’…

‘Who inspired you’…

‘ How long did it take the wisteria to flower’

‘What was it like when you came here’

‘Have you got any more Viola Cornuta ‘… no but just come with me and I will dig one up for you…

Thank you to every one for making what could have ended up being a very disappointing weekend, turn into a really happy friendly one….

So this evening we, the owners of the gardens that opened, will all meet up and go round each others gardens. This will be interesting as there are some new ones this year. It could be a long evening, but there are drinks at the end of it to make it all worth while. I will post again soon when I know the total raised this year for various charities….