Claremont Gardens

We had a lovely morning at Claremont NT Gardens with the twin grandchildren. It was so lovely to be warm and have sun. They have not been there for a while but it is one of our favourite places ( I think we went there about 25 times during the COVID lockdowns!)  and today it was not busy so was lovely. We set out to identify all the flowers we saw ( some I had to check using an app) and all the birds. We found 7  plants with flowers and saw 9 species of birds. We only saw one nest, with a coot on it , bit we did see two lots of Mallard ducklings. No bluebells there but I think there will soon be masses of wild garlic in flower! The children love it there and are able to climb on some of the very old woody Rhodendron branches which is banned in many places. I think some of them must be over 100 years old and some may have  been there when Queen Victoria played there as a child!  There is also a nice children’s playground near the cafe.
We had lunch at the cafe there which does a very sensible healthy childrens lunch.

Back at home we planted some sunflowers and they also collected some woodlice and worms to put in their new wormery at home.