An evening stroll around Cotehele

 A pleasantly sunny evening and an excellent time for an 'after closing' stroll around the top gardens of Cotehele House. With no-one else around, you can almost imagine that this is your own fiefdom. Well, that's a bit of a stretch but we live close enough to visit regularly and regard it as an extension of our own, much more modest, garden. A few photographs as a record.

The lawn to the left was a carpet of daffodils a couple of weeks ago.

One door leads to another..............

Wisteria flowering in the courtyard.

The fruit trees are just coming into blossom. Give it a couple of weeks and it's going to be spectacular.

Apple blossom.....

.....and more blossom.

This sculpture depicts honey bees filling their cells with pollen. And if you look closely enough, within the cells themselves, created from timber and bamboo, you might be lucky and see a variety of real-life bees.

I'd like one in our garden but we'll have to make do with real ones.

Some impressive white bark on a very large Eucalyptus tree.

The top pond in splendid isolation.

Upon reflection............

.........we'll go through this door to the next part of the garden.

The rather lovely and fragrant flower of Winter's Bark (Drymis winteri), a native of Argentina/Chile. It's named after a contemporary of  Sir Francis Drake, John Wynter. He discovered, or more accurately learnt from indigenous people in South America, that the bark was a preventative and curative for scurvy.

The back of the house with a rather limp flag on the tower.

The flower borders are just about getting into their stride. It's amazing what an army of gardeners can achieve.

My tulips never look like this.

Looking over the borders, down the Wooded Valley towards the viaduct at Calstock.