In the Castle Garden

Hello....... One afternoon last week and friend and I went on a adventure to one of our local castles gardens (we're a bit spoilt for history around here as our little town has three castles)

We borrowed two of these and off we went

First stop the The Queen Mothers garden

Then off to the castles woods,

as always at this time of year I was in search of lovely bluebells, and although we did see a few I'm still longing to see a sea of bluebells as far as the eye can see.

All the trees were looking lovely in new leaf, this seasons must have for trees!!

 One of my favourite parts of the garden

is the wild flower meadow, so peaceful and  just stunning this time of year the photo's really don't do it justice.

Then there was the blossom, the cherry trees are starting to finish

but I still manage to find some

Then it was onto the more formal parts of the garden

which are very pretty, but my heart belongs to the woods and wild flower meadow

Here's the view back down the path, quite a back garden.

Now for a bit of history the castle was built by Henry Vlll 1539-1540 as a artillery fortress against French and Spanish invasion and since 1708 it has been the official residence of 'The Lord Warden of the Cinque Port' formed in the 11th century, when five ports joined forces to defend  the coast from invasion. stretching from the South East corner to Hastings ports including (Hastings, Romney, Hythe, Dover and Sandwich)  with eight additional ports limbs including Lydd Folkestone Faversham Margate, Deal, Ramsgate,Brightlingsea and Teneterdan plus another 23 connected towns. There were lots of privileges to being a Cinque port town like no taxes you can read a bit more 'here' if you want to.

Some of the more famous Lord Wardens include William Pitt the younger, The Duke of Wellington, Sir Winston Churchill and Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother.

Back to the gardens.....

 time for a shed shot,  

before we head off to the Castles kitchen gardens, we do love a shed here at the Summerhouse, which is affectionately called 'the shed' around these parts.

The  Kitchen Gardens are so pristinly maintained, not a plant out of place

which put the Summerhouse garden some what to shame, (but then we don't have a fleet gardener, that's our excuse !!)

I just love the trained Apple tree Walk

and the pots cloches and obelisks

but even more so the blossom

the lovely apple blossom was at it's best

So so pretty

There was just enough time for shot of the moat, which these days is a beautiful walled garden, and of course a cuppa and a slice of cake, in the cafe before we headed home.

You can see how close to the sea the castle is from this pic, such a lovely way to spend a afternoon in the sunshine.

Sadly I've not been feeling very well at all just lately so It was wonderful to make it out, during a better balance spell, sadly as ever there has been some terrible ME/Lyme payback for my adventure. 

So I'm sorry if I've not been stopping by every ones blogs. My balance keeps going and I've had the most horrible vertigo since before Easter, I think hay fever is not helping with this, in particular the nasty 'Oil Seed Rape' that looks very pretty in front of the windmill at the moment but really is a blight on the local hay fever suffers, I'm always terrible when it's out.

Oh well so is life

Clare xx