The Northern Horticultural Society was founded in 1946, with the aim of developing horticulture with special reference to conditions in the North. In 1950, it opened the Harlow Carr Botanic Gardens in Harrogate. However, in 2001, the NHS merged with the RHS, and Harlow Carr became an RHS site.
It’s a lovely – and busy – spot to visit, although it’s been a lot less busy during lockdown. It’s open again now, and one of our class members went for a visit. Here are some of her pictures from the Bog Garden.
Yes, it’s rhubarb, but not exactly as you know it. If you have rhubarb and let it go to seed, you get something a bit like this, but not nearly as elegant. This one is probably Rheum palmatum.
Harlow Carr has some excellent plantings of Candelabra Primulas. I gather they’ve made another one – give it twelve months and this will be magnificent.
Here are some of the primulas, with a stand of hostas that seem not to have a single slug or snail toothmark on them. How do they do that?. And the blue flowers, shading into violet, are Himalayan poppies – Meconopsis betonicifolia – that many of us lust after. It’s an ephemeral thing, demanding in the conditions it requires, and most often acting as a monocarpic plant – that is, one that may live as a rosette of leaves for several years, but once it flowers, it dies. Some of the other species hybrids, such as the lovely ‘Lingholm’, are more reliably perennial, but they aren’t betonicifolia… Mind you, neither is betonicifolia – it should probably be called M. baileyi, its original name. And see next picture, too…
These may not be the true cultivar, but they seem to have more than a touch of ‘Hensol Violet’ about them, a lovely deep violet variety of Meconopsis baileyi.
Thanks for sharing these!
If you want to visit Harlow Carr at the moment, you have to book a timed slot in advance…
The Pleasure Gardener 