Today, we are visiting some gardens that I came upon by chance when visiting St Ives! It was a Secret Garden Tour, so wasn’t I the lucky one! Many of the gardens were behind garden doors like this! Wouldn’t you want to know what was behind that door? This photo was taken from inside the garden looking out! See how narrow the walkway was? Ah hah! The narrow, hidden streets of St Ives!
Many of the gardens were along a stretch of Victorian homes high on a bluff……..
They had dainty little terraces…..crammed with plants in pots and planters………
and very nice looking sea fences, which had curly springs on them (see Featured Photo) and below, rusty delights to be discovered…….
Here, I was looking for the magic eight ball!
Who wouldn’t want to sit here and take it all in! Tea anyone?
I am hoping that by showing the pocket gardens, that it will encourage you to open your garden to visitors…… even for just one afternoon. I am sure your neighbors and friends would enjoy it!
The instructions for SOS are easy. The photos can be flowers, vegetables, a garden design, whatever, as long as it’s garden related and posted on Saturday! So, its six photos. Of Gardens. On Saturday. Easy Peasy. To see all the SOS’s look at SIX ON SATURDAY, hosted by the Propagator, to check out all of them each Saturday! See you next week!
ThatTravelLadyInHerShoes 
So, maybe I’ll do an open day as soon as this crazy lock down is lifted.
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So cute .. do you a virtual garden tour 🤔
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I hope to have a lemonade get together in my garden this year…….COVID permitting!
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Who knows maybe I’ll be able to attend
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These are lovely! Many years since I was in St. Ives but they remind me of some coastal ones at Marske in the north east. 🙂 🙂
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A wonderful garden … and that opening door was so inviting.
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That door was one of my favorites Frank! If there is something behind a door I want to see!
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What pretty gardens, and I love that fence! I’ve been to St Ives but didn’t know about the Secret Gardens – it’s a great idea 🙂
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I think they do them randomly whenever they feel like it!
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I can’t wait for our Open Garden Sundays to come round again – if they do this year – as we missed them last year. And sadly, I never took pictures before of gardens I visited, I suppose because I lived near everyone and didn’t see the point. Before I downsized to a flat (with small garden) I lived in a big old Victoria house with enormous garden and after my husband become ill we had to employ a gardener. She was one who opened her gardens to the public and she had the most amazing garden, flowers, fruits, shrubs, trees, a stream, a bridge, a woodland at the bottom – you name it and it was there. Then 3 years ago she also downsized but still had a big garden. Six months later she had a stroke from which she hasn’t recovered. Life is sad, isn’t it? We must enjoy everything while we can, especially the flowers.
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Oh, Mari your comment hit home for me! We have a neighbor, who has the loveliest garden in our entire little community and we all enjoy it so……There is not a day that goes by that you won’t find her working in her garden. Her cottage sits on the corner so everyone walks by one way or another and has a look and a good talk over the garden fence!
Even though we have a smallish cottage I have put more work into my postage stamp- size garden then any I have ever had…..
I had a stroke last May…….I was TPA’d…….do you know what that is? It is an IV push (one time drug) you can receive at the hospital if you get to the hospital in under an hour of your symptoms or sooner and meet the long list of parameters…….I did……within two hours of receiving the IV Push I was back to my old self…..no droopy face, no paralysis of extremities and no VERTIGO, which I had so badly I could not stand up without falling over…..I stayed in ICU for three days just to monitor the drug….. The neurosurgeon told me that that is why they do so many trials on drugs and spend so much time and money developing them, if it can save just one person……That day I was that person…..So everyday is a gift believe me…….
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Such pretty gardens.
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I love St. Ives. We’ve been looking into going this year but decided it would be too busy with so many more people staycationing this year.
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It rained the entire time we were there (in August) but I still had a good time and we stayed at the cutest cottage that sat in the middle of the walkway that EVERYONE IN ST IVES walked past….No kidding…….and then every morning we could hear the beer barrels being rolled down the walkway to be replaced by new beer barrels, that were rolled back up the street…… We often laugh and laugh about our stay there! But, we loved it! Another adventure!
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So sorry about the stroke but so relieved you recovered so well! I just sent you a reply here but the WordPress managers took it off. Phooey.
Maybe it was too long-winded?
Love these postage stamp gardens. I’ll think about opening up my garden (one very large stamp but two lanes) just for the neighbors, just for fun, in the front gate, out the back. Social distancing, you see.
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I hope we are soon over with all COVID soon too! Take photos I want to see what you do!
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I’ll need to stop dragging my feet about buying a smart phone to do that.
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Yes, just ask for a smart phone to cover your Christmas, B-day or any other holiday you celebrate. One gift to celebrate everything! You would love it and they are so simple to set up and use! If I had an old one I’d send it to you! But, now we just rent them through Apple (they have a program) At the end of a certain time (that you set up) You just turn them in and they update you with the new one……we get a new one, every time a new one comes out…..about every two years.
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WordPress has been acting up a lot recently!
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Annoying, that.
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My gardener who had the stroke was also one of the healthiest people I know. She swam every day, took long walks everyday, gardened, ate healthily, drank sparingly, did yoga and pilates twice a week and yet …….
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Yes I know that feeling as well ! No high blood pressure, no diabetes, I was on no drugs, exercise regularly, never smoked. It probs added up to my responding so well to the TPA!
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Such a random thing, it seems.
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Makes me wonder if it’s worth doing all the right, healthy things. I know I shouldn’t think like this but as I ponder another glass of wine and some more butter on the veggies it helps to push the niggly thoughts away.
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Butter? Oh, yeah, especially the way my hubby cooks! I use olive oil. But I fail to see how a lovely glass of wine can be the culprit.
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The other thing, that would have been comical if I hadn’t felt so poorly and seeing everything in triplicate during my stroke ……. I had my stroke on a holiday! Memorial Day! AND I was so angry because the ambulance ride was my first major day out since the COVID lockdown! To top that off the only neurologist was not present at the small hospital ( it was a holiday after all) and they set up a Zoom call to a neurologist in a town 300 miles away! They have to have an order to give the TPA and you must meet most of the parameters or it is a no go…….But, I could hardly hold my head up to answer the questions he was asking me! And then to top it off my hubby was not present, although he came in the ambulance with me…….he had forgot his face mask and they made him go home to get one! Can you imagine? No masks to be had in a hospital during COVID! They were hoarding them! I also had to sign papers giving them permission to give me the drug……I could hardly see the paper much less sign it…..As a retired CCU RN I knew what the side effects could be so I was aware, otherwise what a mess that would have been, because hubby was not present during the entire time. AND that one IV push was over $50,000. I was aware of that too!
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Good grief, Cady! What a nightmare. Or quagmire. All that just delayed matters even further. It’s a wonder the hospital staff kept within the time frame. (I hope your medical insurance covered these procedures.)
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Yep, they did! They were set up and waiting and had procedures set in place before I ever reached the hospital! The medics were awesome! They whisked me in there, doctor on call ( who looked about 10) asked me some questions and I was on Zoom! Medicare covered some and my secondary and third medical insurance everything else! My bill was humongous!
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Believe me when I say, if I want a cookie or two now I eat them!
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IT’s amazing just how much you can do with a small garden with clever planting and seating area. Before Covid I was a member of a gardening group and every month we would take it in turns to open up our gardens. My favourites were not the rambling hectares managed by gardeners of the wealthy owners but small plots where the member got dirt under their nails and the garden was created with love not$£€ 🙂
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My thoughts exactly!
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Delicious gardens and I’d love to sit on that terrace with some tea…or just sit there. But it would be better with tea. When you were going to St. Ives, did you meet a man with seven wives? 🙂
janet
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I love these secret garden tours (because I love to nosy around other people’s gardens), when I lived in Ludlow, Shropshire they held them every year. I haven’t seen any in St Ives since I have been living here, what year was this? Small plots can be the most beautiful.
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2016 and I think they were open only when the gardeners felt like opening them!
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The year we moved here. Sad to have missed them.
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Here, every June the Yakima Arboretum sponsors tours of private gardens, with proceeds going to the Arboretum. Last year, because of the pandemic, was the first year there was no tour. Sad. Maybe this year? We’ll see.
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Looks like a great garden to tour.
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What lovely gardens. That fence in the first picture is just perfect. I do hope the Open Garden Scheme goes ahead this year.
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I hope all the gardens are open this year!!!!!!
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Forgive me if my reply posts 2x as WP has been very flukey for me as well the last few weeks.
So sorry to read of your stroke, and with no apparent cause, but relieved you came out of it unscathed! 🙂 Incredible you could be treated via Zoom. I tend to agree with Jo about not having a smartphone. The gardens you have posted here give me spring fever as do the catalogues received in the mail yesterday. How wonderful to know Spring truly is around the corner — but then again,it’s probably already arrived for you in your climate.
Warm wishes to you for continued good health and well being!
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I just wrote you a very long reply and WP wouldn’t post it!!!!!! Is there a limit of words in comments? Ok, I will start again and save it before I click SEND and see what is up with that! I may have to divide the post comments as well…….very frustrating…..I think they don’t like how much I can talk! Ha ha!
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See, the short one went through!!!!! Ugh! Anyway I was saying that for almost a year that many of the doctor’s have been treating their patients via Zoom. Patients and doctor’s and staff were reluctant to go to the offices and mingle…..I guess it is just one of the signs of the times…..More to follow…….
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I get about one catalog a day from plant companies…..I love looking through them, but have to be very careful…..most plants, no matter what they say about the Zones can’t hold up to our heat and humidity….or my rabbits, deer and voles……ha ha! I do order from Old House Gardens…..they specialize in the old, old, old varieties of our grandmother’s gardens. The plants you can’t find in the nurseries……I love reading about where they find the plants……they dig them out of old and forlorn gardens and then reproduce them in their nurseries…..for a short time……..I like having plants that my grandmother may have had in her garden. More to follow……
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I have most of Elizabeth Lawrence’s garden books……Have you heard of her? She was a gardener from my neck of the woods and still has a garden and bird sanctuary here…..She talked about how they had to exchange seeds in order to get new plants…and exchange she did…..she wrote all about her garden, who she exchanged seeds with and why! It was way before you could just go to the local nursery……My all time favorite garden book is One Writer’s Garden; Eudora Welty’s Home Place…..I read that book every year to get going in my garden! I love EVERYTHING about it, the writing and the photos! Talk to you soon! Have a good March 1st!
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Just seeing this…didn’t see separate ones… I had been having much trouble with WP for a few weeks…then read others have as well. Don’t know what’s going on there and they offer little to 0 weekend support but hope to return then and see…
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Same thing with me!
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Love St Ives but have never been lucky enough to visit the secret gardens so great to see your pics!
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What a lovely little garden, and the entrance to the door is so enticing! I’m glad you pointed out the springs as I did not notice them until I looked for them. I like the rustic artefacts they have incorporated into their garden. What a great find!
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