A Favourite Place on a Good Friday!

I've had a day at home today before heading back up to North Yorkshire to spend the rest of the Easter weekend with family and with what domestic chores I had on my list ticked off, I decided to take a leisurely stroll around Wentworth (a special place just 15 mins down the road) including a visit to one of my personal mecca's - the Garden Centre that's so much more than a Garden Centre!

Situated in sixteen acres of historic walled and landscaped gardens, Wentworth Garden Centre is arguably the biggest and most attractive centre in the North. Its setting, in the former Kitchen, Italian and Japanese gardens of Wentworth Woodhouse is unique.

A large part of Wentworth Garden Centre occupies the site of the great former kitchen garden complex built in the late 18th Century by the Fitzwilliams of Wentworth Woodhouse. The foundations for the surrounding walls were started in 1786 and glasshouses erected against these walls would have supplied the finest and most delicate fruit such as peaches, pineapples and apricots. The gardens were subsequently developed with the planting of orchards, ornamental and herb gardens with additional features added in the early years of the 20th Century by Maud, Countess Fitzwilliam (d.1967) wife of the 9th Earl, with the creation of the beautiful Rock garden. Inevitably, much of the cultivated area fell into disrepair, until the creation of the garden centre in 1976.

So, not only do you get your traditional plant centre ...but you get historic landscaped gardens to wander around, a fantastic restaurant, a small farm and adventure playground for little people to enjoy, a farmer's market every second Sunday and a courtyard with an array of small old fashioned shops selling everything from local produce to chocolates, art and photography, to books, stationary and glassware.

I can easily spend a happy half day of blissful oblivion wandering around and trying to avoid temptation! And I have to credit my camera and two hours of fruitful photopgraphy for staving off the appetite to purchase something from every shop!

Thank you Nikon!! :o)