The Weir, Nr Hereford NT Garden Visit #3

Just occasionally, if you are not careful, a little National Trust gem can be missed.  It was only because I picked up a local places to visit guide that I read about The Weir, nr Hereford.   It was about an hour’s drive from where we were staying, but as we had decided to visit Hay-on-Wye and  it was nearby, we added it to our list of places to visit.The house is owned by the National Trust and leased to a nursing home, so it is only the garden that is open.  We were directed initially to the Kitchen Garden, which was a little walk from the car park towards the door in the walled garden.  If  you have ever read The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett, you will know that excited feeling you can get at the thought of opening a door in a wall to a garden.   I wasn’t disappointed, behind the door was an old-fashioned, organic, peat-free vegetable garden.  It is a working kitchen garden, which supplies fruit and vegetables to Brockhampton Estate and Croft Castle, two large National Trust properties that are nearby.   The garden is walled on three sides only, the fourth has hedging and a magnificent view.  The lady in the ticket office gave us a brief background history and was so enthusiastic I wondered if she was actively involved in the renovations.  She told us that the Kitchen Garden is still undergoing a renovation program and apologetically said that it was still a “little tatty” around the edges… I loved it, it had a very special feel about it.   Alongside one wall is an old lean-to greenhouse packed full of good things.   At this stage, I apologise for the duplication of some of these photos.  I used a few for Wordless Wednesday this week, but as they are part of The Weir I am including them again.   I don’t know if there was a collective noun for Onions but the staging shelves were full of them.I just had to take a photo of the orange and yellow carrots, languishing in the wheelbarrow.  These were also for sale at the ticket office.   I love the shapes, so unlike the boring straight carrots you buy from the shops.There were Onions plaited and hanging on the wall:As we left the greenhouse, the straw hat caught my eye, and if you look carefully, you will see the Fig growing against the wall behind it.  I wondered who wore the hat, was it the gardener?I wanted to take a lot more photos of the Kitchen Garden, but I think MB was beginning to rue the day he had ever bought me a camera for my birthday.  He was getting fidgety and wanted to see the rest of the garden, so I took a couple more before leaving this lovely Kitchen Garden to find him.The rest of the garden is a tranquil riverside walk, with paths on a fairly steep rise from the edge of the River Wye which ran along the edge of the garden.   I had to watch my footing and in an effort not to be too much of a nuisance with my camera, I took just one more photo.The scaffolding you can see in the photo is the work the NT are doing at the moment in rebuilding some of the wall on the river’s edge.  You can see also how steep the garden is, however, once you get to the end of the walk, there is a large grassy area and we wished we had brought a picnic with us, it was an absolutely perfect area to sit and watch and just chill out.  I really recommend you pay The Weir a visit, and I am told that the Spring Bulbs are something to behold.