Travel Stories: English Gardens Tour (3)

(This is the third in a series about the 2018 English Gardens Tour I led.)

At noon on May 16th, we met up with my tour group at Spokane International Airport. All of us were full of excited anticipation about the coming days. After so many months of preparation, was it possible the trip was finally about to begin? I’m talking about our English Gardens Tour.

The down side of traveling from Spokane, Washington to London is that you lose a day getting there. We flew from Spokane to Denver, and then on to London. Our arrival at Heathrow was the following day at about 9:30 in the morning.

There was an interesting hurdle to overcome, however. When you land in another country, it’s typical to go through Immigration and Customs. Bill and I have been through that routine in Heathrow many a time, and it’s usually a pretty speedy process.

Well, guess what? A certain prince and his fiance were getting married two days later (yup, Harry and Meghan!). That bogged down the trip through Immigration to a crawl. I have never seen so many people in that huge room before. It took our group nearly 2 hours to make their way through!

I finally made my way to the arrivals hall. The ordeal was quickly replaced by relief and joy at seeing our tour escort, Cosetta Zanobetti. She was standing there holding a “Susan’s in the Garden” sign! What a kick to see that in print, LOL. We greeted each other warmly, like long-lost friends. She was stunned to hear how long the Immigration and Customs process took.

Once everyone made it, we all headed out to our private coach which was a most welcome sight. The fact that we had officially made it to London and were on our very own bus lifted our spirits. Soon, we were on the road, heading to Waterperry Gardens.

Waterperry Gardens background:

The School of Horticulture for Women was located here from 1932 to 1971. Beatrix Havergal established the school after World War I. Her goal was for women to learn a skill that would lead to employment opportunities. Waterperry Gardens is on 8 acres. Interesting features include a rock garden, long herbaceous border, a foliage border and alpine gardens. But it doesn’t stop there. We enjoyed the formal garden, arboretum, rose garden, an allotment garden, the waterlily canal, and riverside walk. There’s also a 100-year-old orange tree house which originally inspired Beatrix to establish her horticultural school.

The Museum of Rural Life houses a collection of ancient tools and implements, medieval pottery, veterinary tools and so on. There is also a curator on hand to answer questions. There’s even a garden shop. That’s always a fun place to find garden-related goodies to take home. They have a plant center, an art gallery with contemporary arts and crafts, and a tea shop.

Our visit to the garden:

We began with a light lunch in the Waterperry Tea Shop. That definitely perked all of us up after our long flight. Then we headed into the gardens to explore. I never saw so many happy faces each time I ran into members of our group. I could tell they loved the garden.

Photos from our visit:

Yes, we timed our trip perfectly to the blooming of the wisteria!

  

  

   

So that’s the report on Waterperry Gardens.

After that, we had another hour to drive before getting to our first hotel. W we stayed for 3 nights at the Old Swan & Minster Mill in Minster Lovell. As you can see by the next photo, it was absolutely charming and everyone was delighted with their rooms. The food in their restaurant was excellent and the service equally wonderful. As you would guess, we all slept like logs that first night!

That covers the first full day of our trip. And don’t worry: this should be the only really long blog post about it! I hope you enjoyed it.

To learn more about Waterperry Gardens, click here.