Sculpture Exhibition at Rosemoor.

The beauty of living in this country is that garden visiting doesn’t have to stop just because it is winter. I don’t know about other countries, but here we are lucky to have people or organisations who are willing to create special winter gardens and hold sculpture exhibitions within their already very large gardens. These gardens can be scaled down for our own gardens to maybe just one bed or part of a bed that can be seen from the house, no point in getting cold unnecessarily! Even if you don’t have the room to make a special bed, then we can take inspiration from all the plants that are used. By using them at home we then make our gardens more interesting during the dark months of winter and if a piece of sculpture is added that can be seen from one of our windows, then even better!  When we got up this morning we could see it was going to be a nice sunny day, not a cloud in the sky, so made the decision to visit Rosemoor, a garden belonging to the Royal Horticultural Society near the north coast of Devon, which we know has a winter garden within their huge garden, and an added attraction was that they are holding a sculpture exhibition this month, need I say more!

This was the first sculpture that we came to, titled – The Sun  Hat. I liked the colour and the texture of this one and if I had a spare £ 1,150 I’m sure I could find somewhere in my garden for her!

Lots of lovely Camellias, this one had loads of quite small flowers, I think it is Cornish Snow.

It wasn’t long before I discovered my favourite red stemmed Cornus, no winter garden should be without it!

This one is titled Refuge, I like to think of my garden as refuge for all the wildlife which is being squeezed out of the countryside because of chemicals and it is also a refuge for me, away from the world we live in today, my daughter says that I live in a bubble here!

Lots of Snowdrop Atkinsii under the willow stems with Euonymous Emerald and Gold adding to the sunshine.

“Ben” looks rather lonely, I think he wants to go home with someone!

All the Betula Jaquemontii look as if they have been pressure washed, they were all such a sparkling white.

Just shows what you can create with recycled copper, I think this is my favourite of them all, but I suppose it will change colour to blue/green when it gets weathered, it looked so good gleaming in the sunshine.

So much colour here, it could be summer. The heather in the foreground and the peeling bark of Acer griseum add light and texture to the overall scene.

Amazing what you find sitting in a tree, very lifelike, but these won’t fly away.

Lots more snowdrops further into the garden, still Atkinsii.

Another piece of work by Melanie Deegan who made the Sun hat at the beginning, again in my favourite blue.

Viburnum Bodnantense New Dawn flowering merrily away, looking very pretty.

We would all be really worried if our dandelions grew this tall, they were about 5 ft !Lovely though, could see these in my garden.

All of a sudden we were enveloped in the most amazing honey perfume, I knew what it was, Sarcococca, but found it eventually about 20 ft away, the perfume was trapped between the yew hedges. Their bushes are so much bigger than mine and therefore the perfume was so much stronger with so many more flowers.

This gourd shape lends itself to being sculpted as do the seedheads that we saw dotted around the garden.

Another beautiful Camellia, there were lots in flower, making it look very spring like.

I could see something like this in our woodland strip, not quite a totem pole, but similar.

I put this in to remind me to dig up and split my clumps of Acorus, they will make a good ground cover in part of the garden.

I know Stag Beetles are an endangered species, but I wouldn’t want to meet one 4ft long!

So sculptural in real life, no wonder Zantedeschia have been copied here.

By this time we were half way round the huge garden and my muscles were starting to protest. This is the furthest that I have walked since last August so felt it was time to turn back. We did stop half way along our walk to have a light lunch in the restaurant and give me a chance for a sit down, by the time we left Rosemoor I was feeling really pleased at the progress that has been made since Christmas.

We really enjoyed our visit to Rosemoor in lovely sunshine, for the first time, the sun had quite a bit of heat in it – I think it is going to get colder as the week goes by – the winter garden showed just how colourful a garden can be at this time of year and the sculpture exhibition was the icing on the cake! Hope you enjoyed walking round with me.