Our nearest National Trust property is Biddulph Grange Gardens. We try to visit once if not more in each season and we recently made our first visit of the year. Much work is being done on a new drainage system so parts of the garden were closed off.
Also the day we visited the contents of the shop were being moved down to what was the reception area, the intention being to create a new tea room where the shop was within the building overlooking the gardens. It will be interesting to go back when this work is completed.
When we arrived we saw that a special trail had been organised to celebrate the Chinese New Year.
We followed the red paper lanterns around the paths and tried to find the information for each year.
I think we spotted them all. We found our birth years which are Tiger and Horse. This year is the year of the Pig.
The lanterns led us up through the larger trees like the Giant Redwoods
and the monkey puzzle trees
Towards the Chinese garden.
The ideal place for many more lanterns.
They all looked so pretty hanging in the trees and dancing in the sunshine and they added extra colour and warmth to the garden.
We enjoyed our walk even though it wasn't as long as we had expected because of the closures of both the Wellingtonia Walk and the Woodand Walk.
It was so quiet we had the garden almost to ourselves.
As we left volunteers and were scurrying backwards and forwards with boxes of stock and bits of display equipment for the new shop. We looked at all the plants for sale and I bought a big pot of snowdrops for just £2. I'm keeping my fingers crossed they will survive as we don't have a great track record for keeping snowdrops in our heavy clay soil but this time they will be planted in a tub rather than in the ground.
