Tapeley

While I was in Devon, Manda took me to Tapeley. This is a beautiful estate with Grade II listed gardens, and oh my, those are some gardens. Manda's lovely mum, Penny, came along too. Both Manda and Penny are brilliant proper camera photographers, whereas I'm an iPhoneographer, and the three of us had a lovely time wandering around the gardens taking pictures.

Agapanthus

Daisies and brick steps

Flower detail on a gate

Succulent flowers (flowers of succulents)

After a delicious lunch of smoked trout at the tea rooms, we wandered up to visit the pigs and chickens and then Penny suggested we take a look around the kitchen garden.

As we approached the garden, a sign told me it was a walled garden. My heart did an actual skippity-leap on learning this because I'm a massive fan of the old BBC Victorian Kitchen Garden series that starred Harry Dodson and Peter Thoday, so I found the idea of being in an actual factual old walled garden pretty thrilling, I can tell you.

Door in the wall of the walled garden

The garden was beautiful, and it's a working one so it was full of fruit and vegetables. There was a massive greenhouse along one of the walls and inside it grapes were growing. Back in the day, the greenhouse would have been heated by a system of cast iron pipes filled with hot water, warmed by a coal-fired furnace.

I loved the old things in the garden, like this Victorian glass cloche and the pretty cast iron grates.

There were also old varieties of apple and pear trees, as well as a patch of glorious purple-haired artichokes.

Moth on an artichoke flower

Artichoke flower macro

After lots more photography we left the garden and wandered back down, past the old Victorian ice house.

During the winter months, the ice house would have been packed with ice and snow and the building would have acted as a fridge and freezer.

Daisies on the ice house

Even the car park provided a final photo opportunity as it is next to a field of highland cattle.

Big thanks to Manda and Penny for a lovely day out at Tapeley. It was wonderful and I thoroughly enjoyed it.