Tuesday 14 June 16, We then took our friend Rosa to visit ‘Poppy Cottage’ garden at Ruan High Lanes situated in the heart of the beautiful Roseland Peninsula. Poppy Cottage Garden covers an acre full of colour with all year round interest. Planted as a series of rooms which are small gardens in themselves, it is brimming with bulbs, herbaceous grasses, shrubs, flowers and even exotics mainly colour themed, with plenty of places to sit and soak up the ambiance of this lovely garden. At the top part of the garden is an orchard which is home to some unusual ducks and mandarin chickens. This is also a nursery area with a wide range of plants that can be purchased.

This divine place has been the lifelong passion of Tina Pritchard and her husband, who are both professional gardeners. The garden shows there love and devotion and what can be done with a small piece of land if you have the time. Poppy Cottage Garden was featured by the BBC. Sadly, this may be the last year of Poppy Garden as Tina and her husband are getting a divorce and they are having to sell up, there was a ‘For Sale’ board outside the house when we visited the garden.

My husband, Rosa and I spent time here and had tea, coffee and cakes with Tina and we were chatting away like we had known her as a dear friend for many years. Tina had such a warm and friendly personality, she told us that she was hoping to sell the house to someone who would keep the garden going, but time will tell if this is the case. It would be ‘sad’ to lose such a lovely garden. The garden was really inspiring to me and I wrote a poem here called ‘Lover’s In Paradise’. We spent the afternoon here and left here at closing time

What a beautiful place, welcomed into private garden, £4 entrance fee well worth a visit, lovely owner happy to chat and give advice