Tag Archives: Botanic Gardens

Ferrera Park Aviles, Asturias in Spain part 3

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After walking up a fairly steep road, admiring the marble all the way, we got to the park which is quite a busy place, very well used by joggers and all sorts, like most parks. Duck ponds are always popular with the kids and they have two rather exotic black swans in residence there.

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Unfortunately this one had a limp.
Swan in Ferrera Park, Aviles

Ferrera Park is 80,000 square metres in area and it was the private park of the Ferrera Marquesses’ family until it was finally bought by the Town Hall for public use. King Juan Carlos I inaugurated it in May 1976. It is an English/British style park.

There’s a separate area through a gateway leading into this topiary garden which made me feel very much at home, all clipped box hedges, roses, pelargoniums and lavender.

a garden in park 1

agarden in Ferrera park 2

In fact I think that the large stone building in the background was a convent and this would have been a medicinal garden in earlier times.

agarden in Ferrera park 3

It’s a really beautiful part of the park and we had it all to ourselves, there was a sign at the entrance and from a distance we could only read a large NO so we thought maybe you weren’t allowed in but as we got closer we saw that it said NO DOGS, but maybe it put people off going in. I’d have hated to have missed it, and I must admit it was nice to be able to take photos with no people around.

garden in park 7 fountain

De Kruidhof Botanic Gardens, Fryslan, the Netherlands

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De Kruidhof 4

We visited De Kruidhof Botanic Gardens again when we were in the Netherlands last month. The last time we were there it was September and the fruit trees were in full swing, this time the fruit blossom was just beginning to bloom, as you can see.

De Kruidhof 6

These botanic gardens are really lovely, but maybe a bit remote for many people, it was very quiet when we were there, just as it was the last time. They are situated in Friesland, north east Netherlands, quite a rural district. They have a good plant nursery attached to them.

Either the box balls below have been too enthusiatically trimmed, or they’re suffering from box blight as so many of them seem to be in the UK. Mind you someone did tell me that the box blight was just a reaction they have to being constantly cut back, that seems a reasonable hypothesis to me. Don’t be so brutal to your box plants and they’ll probably grow well, mine certainly do, but they could be described as being ‘shaggy’ not sculptured.

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In the Netherlands though they have perfected the art of sculpting trees and the photo below is of a tree which is being trained to fit around the metal structure.

De Kruidhof 1

They take tree pruning very seriously. I like naturally growing trees but I also admire the regimented trees too.

De Kruidhof 5

Edinburgh, The Water of Leith and Botanic Gardens

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We had to drive my brother to Edinburgh airport on Saturday morning so we thought we might as well go and have another walk along by the Water of Leith and into Stockbridge.

So we parked the car at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art and had a look round as usual before walking down to the footpath. As you can see they have a neon sign on the gallery building, to cheer us up I suppose.

Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art frontage close

Stockbridge is always dangerous for me because I can’t resist the book shops there, but more of that another day. Apart from being windy, which is the usual situation in Edinburgh, it was a nice blue sky day so we decided to continue the walk along the river in the direction of Edinburgh Botanic Gardens.

Reflections

We hadn’t walked that far before because we usually drive there and I thought it might be a bit too long a walk but we managed it. By that time we were carrying our book purchases too, well I have to admit it MY book purchases because my husband didn’t buy any, so it was all fairly knackering.

We just had to sit down when we got to the botanics, they’ve finished the refurbishment at last, they seemed to have been at it forever, but it’s all spiffing now and must have cost a fortune when you consider the price of stone nowadays.

New Entrance building Edinburgh Botanic Gardens

It was VERY busy, but to be honest there wasn’t an awful lot to be seen plant-wise, which was a surprise to me because I think of the botanics as being fairly sheltered but my garden plants seem to be further on than theirs. Most of the trees are still fairly bare but we’ll be going back again to check it out again soon because I wanted to buy a small magnolia from the garden centre but the thought of carrying it the very long way back to the car put me right off because we were exhausted by that time.

I think it was about a 10 mile round walk, which is the longest one we’ve done this year. Anyway I took some reasonable photos, there’s nearly always at least one heron in the river, yesterday there were two, and also a few anglers. I haven’t a clue what they can catch in there, maybe brown trout. I bet the birds would have the most success though.

Heron 1