The Garden House, Saxby, Lincolnshire

[vivienr]

This is the first day that the weather and other things have allowed me to have a day out looking at snowdrops. I decided to head to Lincolnshire to see a very new garden in the morning and perhaps another in the afternoon. However, the obligatory broken down lorry on the M62 and the amazing amount of roadworks meant that I only had time for the first visit.

The Garden House is north of Lincoln and handy to combine with a visit to Pottertons. It has a long strip of garden with another strip of baby woodland at right angles planted with wildflowers, narcissus and snowdrops. The location is very peaceful surrounded by fields, although it will be a little more noisy if the Red Arrows are there to give you a free air show (three times a day apparently - they are based at a nearby airfield). It is all very new and some parts are still being planted but it has a lovely atmosphere, the owners are friendly and the little tea room does the necessary soup and cake

Unfortunately I only had an old camera with me which somehow loses about half my pictures so this is all I have to show.

The woodland/meadow walk leads to a pond with a nice bench to sit and soak up the sunshine.
Iris reticulata 'J.S. Dijt - there are thousands of bulbs around the garden
The air show
The bottom of the garden - colchicums and fritillaria have been planted behind the pond
A large patch of crocus
The formal gardens have lots of little areas including several planted with iris (you can just see the danfordiae on the top left) and there is one with a collection of snowdrop 'specials'.   

[Paddy Tobin]

Nice introduction to a new garden, Vivien. They seem to have made a good start, plenty of planting and it will be interesting to see it develop over coming years.

Paddy

[Armin]

Vivien,
a nice new garden. The iris bed don't show Iris reticulata J.S. Dijt which is purple violet.
Maybe ordinary blue Iris reticulata... I re-post Simon's retics cv summary. Maybe you can ID from memory.   
The crocus patch is nice...

[vivienr]

Vivien,
a nice new garden. The iris bed don't show Iris reticulata J.S. Dijt which is purple violet.
Maybe ordinary blue Iris reticulata... I re-post Simon's retics cv summary. Maybe you can ID from memory.   

They were described in the garden leaflet as JS Dijt, and as they must have bought hundreds of them, I guess they must have bought them as such. The photo is a little bleached out but the colour is fairly correct.

The crocus patch is nice

They list Cream Beauty, Snow Bunting, Romance and Whitewell Purple. If I'd had someone with me I would have said 'I see they have the dark-stemmed version' ... but I was by myself so couldn't show off

[melbee]

Nice pictures .I think I will take a look at the gardens later in the year .It is only about an hours drive from me

[vivienr]

Forgot to say that they have a website

www.thegardenhousesaxby.co.uk

for opening times and much better pictures

[Ragged Robin]

A nice mixture of formal gardens and informal meadows and woodland, Vivien, and the countryside looks wonderful.  Thanks for introducing this garden and the link to their website.