I am brown. Very brown. Brown as a coconut!
Alan and I traipsed around Old Harwich yesterday in the sunshine, peeking into people’s gardens. Now, before you sound the alarm and think any improper thoughts, we were paid for the privilege! Harwich gardeners come together every year and open their lovely gardens to the public so they can raise money for chosen charities and this year, because we’re learning to use our cameras (properly), Alan suggested going on the tour to see the gardens and take photos.
I took over 200 photos and deleted over half of them, choosing my favourites and best shots.
I’ve never seen so many passion fruit vines! Most of the gardens that we visited on the tour had passion fruit vines that seemed to be well-established and seemed to thrive! It made me smile seeing the vines because once, a long time ago, when our house in Manila was a small two-bedroom bungalow, our garage wall was covered by a huge passion fruit vine. Who knew passion fruit would take to Harwich that well?
I think this was one of my favourites. Mostly because it was such an interesting garden. You had to go down several steps. They called it the Sunken Garden. The name of the garden made me smile because it reminded me of my days at uni when I was at the Diliman campus of the University of the Philippines. There was an oval area behind the main library in the campus called the Sunken Garden (I learned during my first week at uni that the “garden” actually sank a few millimeters a year!).
This garden made me giggle. This was the garden hiding behind the Swan Gallery. The lady who owns the gallery runs arts and crafts classes and apparently, her knitting group were busy knitting the various flowers and creatures found around the garden. There were poppies, bees, flowers, and bunting. There was even a knitted owl hiding in one of the perches!
One of the gardens had this lovely cherry tree in a huge pot and the branches were heavily laden with red jewel-like fruit! Who knew you could do that? Well, I did, at least in theory. But this cherry tree was thriving. It must have looked amazing when the blossoms were in bloom!
I think we’re doing the tour again next year (with me armed with SPF2000 sunblock). There are so many things to discover in Old Harwich. If you’re in this neck of the woods, next year, watch out for the Harwich Secret Gardens tour. Everyone is lovely and flowers and the plants are interesting!
Yellywelly 