A Saturday Out and About

As mentioned in my last post, I had plans for this Saturday, that I was so hoping would come to fruition. The plan was to pay a visit to somewhere in London that I'd never been before and the prospect was quite exciting.

I had originally planned the visit with a friend, the same one that I'd visited the Chelsea Flower Show with, but unfortunately, she couldn't make it, so OH stepped in and agreed to come with me instead.

The visit itself, was to some gardens that were opening as part of the National Garden Scheme, a scheme whereby gardeners countrywide, open up their gardens to the public for one day per year, in aid of charity.

We decided to cycle there, as it was a pretty easy ride, mostly through parks and on cycle routes away from busy roads. OH hates buses and refuses to get on one and parking can be difficult in this area.  Besides, the exercise would be good for us and it probably was the easiest option all things considered.

Anyone who reads my blog regularly, will know that after living in London for 20 years, we often tend to relax at home on weekends and don't go out and about that much, mainly due to the volume of traffic on the roads and the crowds of people, but for once we did venture out and it was really very enjoyable indeed.

The gardens in question were The Secret Gardens of Spitalfields, a stones throw away from Liverpool Street Station and Spitalfield's Market. They are described on the NGS website as 'a collection of hidden treasures behind some of the finest merchants and weavers houses in Spitalfields'.  With such a description, how could we possibly resist visiting.

The gardens included the tiny courtyard garden of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings (SPAB), which was founded by William Morris in 1877 and we started our visit here. This also turned out to be one of our favourite gardens of the day, although we did enjoy visiting all of them as they all had something different to offer. In many of the gardens there were refreshments available and in this one there were a few plants to buy too, although I didn't purchase any on this occasion.

There were hundreds of people visiting these seven tiny, but intriguing walled city gardens dotted around the area and there were queues to get into a couple of them, with access given on a 'one in one out' basis, but the queues didn't take at all long to go down.

Within a couple of hours we'd visited all of the gardens and had thoroughly enjoyed ourselves in this beautiful, historical corner of East London.  I didn't take any photos, as the gardens had quite a lot of people in them and it wouldn't have provided the best representation of them, but do check out the link above or the NGS website which has some wonderful photos of the gardens.

I'd definitely visit again another year, but would turn up much earlier and try to avoid the queues at the more popular gardens. I will possibly take my friend next year, as I know for definite that she would really enjoy it and it would be a great excuse for a day out.  Have you visited any open gardens this year?