Dyffryn Gardens 2017

In July, I made my annual trip to Dyffryn Gardens, a grand Victorian manor house in the Vale of Glamorgan in south Wales. The house is surrounded by extensive gardens and is a really pleasant place to go for an afternoon stroll.

I like going back at least once a year to see how the flower displays have changed and to spot the latest gardening trends. Last year, the gardens featured lots of reds and oranges, and wildflowers such as poppies and cornflower.

While in 2014, the gardens were home to lots of bright, planned flower beds with yellow and pink tulip displays, in particular, sticking in my mind.

This year, the theme was the First World War, probably to tie in with its centenary. Everything looked very natural and organic as though the gardeners hadn’t done anything, which I really liked.

None of the flower beds looked carefully planned, polished or manipulated, although much like ‘no makeup makeup’, I’m sure lots of work went into making them look so natural.

The highlights included lots of very pretty wildflowers, as well as some beautiful pink roses in the rose garden (above and below).

In some of the gardens, the flowers had been replaced by vegetables, such as marrows and squash, to highlight how people turned their flower gardens into vegetable plots during the war to help feed the nation.

As ever, I had a very pleasant day out at Dyffryn Gardens and enjoyed wandering around, admiring the flowers and annoying my brother by taking a ridiculous amount of photos.

I’m also conscious that I’ve yet to blog much about the manor house, so I’ll write about that in my next post.