Celebrations at Barnsley House

Barnsley House was the venue this weekend for a special dinner celebrating the life of the creator of its world-famous garden, Rosemary Verey.

This year marks the centenary of Mrs Verey’s birth and the weekend also saw the 30th Barnsley Village Festival, which she helped to found.

Guests at the dinner included members of the Verey family, the Calcot group, which now runs the hotel in the once family home, journalists, and photographers who worked with Mrs Verey on her many books.

I was lucky enough to be invited and had a wonderful time catching up with people, such as garden photographer Andrew Lawson and Mrs Verey’s daughter Davina Wynne Jones, owner of Herbs for Healing, and meeting new people, including writer and photographer Tony Lord, former editor of the Plant Finder.

We were sat at tables named after different areas of the garden – I was on The Wilderness, which seemed pretty apt given the state of some parts of my own plot.

The dinner was a ‘plant-based’, tasting-style menu of garden-grown vegetables with beetroot, broad beans and rhubarb among the ingredients. Planning for it had started last year.

Meanwhile, the hotel was decorated with cut flowers that had also been raised by the garden team.

With the difficult weather of past months, head gardener Richard Gatenby had been worrying about how the garden would look for the event but on the day the sun shone, the wisteria was smothering the back of the house in blooms and the replanted laburnum arch was a mass of golden yellow against the purple alliums.

Here’s a little of what we saw.

The many topiary shrubs and trees were all neatly clipped.

I definitely had wisteria envy. The smell from this was incredible.

I loved the scarecrow in the potager.

I think I might copy this tiny wigwam idea.

How’s that for colour!

Welsh poppies in yellow and orange were everywhere in the garden.

Cow parsley in the late afternoon sunshine. Beautiful.

• For details about Barnsley House including garden tours, visit the website.