An award winning garden

On the canalside between Saltaire and Shipley there's a historic, Grade II listed, cluster of stone cottages called Jane Hills, built in stages between 1796 and the mid 1800s. One of them has a very tiny garden, but it is lovingly crammed with beautiful plants by its owner Kamal Hussain. Last year it was a finalist in the Garden of the Year awards and it won the BBC Gardeners World 'Gardens of the Year 2024 - People's Choice Award'. Despite the dry summer we've had, it is once again vibrant and interesting this year, with a huge variety of colourful plants. Kamal says he is inspired by David Hockney's use of colour. It also smells divine, with the fragrance of honeysuckle and jasmine wafting over the canal towpath as you pass by.  What a feast for the senses!

 

Exploring Crail

Fife holiday 2026 #4

The planned walk for the second full day was from Leven to St Monans, about 13 miles. I'm sure it was beautiful but, having walked what was (for me) quite a distance the day before, I decided to err on the safe side and have a gentler day. I also wanted time to explore the area in greater detail and take a few, more considered photos, so I ambled around Crail all morning. It was bright and dry but freezing cold! I had to go back to base and put a few more clothes on, including my woolly hat, which I was glad to have taken with me. I'm not sure you should need a woolly hat in June but that's the UK for you! 

Beyond the harbour to the west there's a curve of beach, the end of which you can see in the photo above. I spent some time round the harbour, taking more note of the various old buildings. The large white building on the right was once the Customs House, a late 17th century building with crowstep gables. Some of the adjoining cottages are even older than that.

It was in the harbour that I spotted my first eider ducks - a mummy and two chicks. A true coastal duck, they are resident all around the Scottish coast and the far north of England. It's an amber listed species, meaning it requires monitoring but is not yet critically endangered or facing severe, immediate extinction risks. We saw quite a few of them on our walks and thankfully there appeared to be good numbers of chicks still surviving. 

There are some wonderful old buildings in Crail. Look at the one above, gorgeous red sandstone and rough hewn stones. The marker above the front door was, annoyingly, obscured by the creeper. I've looked it up online and found: 'The date stone above the front door of 'The Auld Hoose' reads 1686 but is actually a marriage lintel reflecting the earliest owners of this ancient house - George Dishington and Jean (or perhaps Isobel) Strachan. The house is actually older than 1686 and a part of the garden wall has been dated to 1540.'

Along Marketgate, you can see the old Mercat (market) cross, signifying the right of the village to hold a market. The shaft dates from the 17th Century. The cap and unicorn and the octagonal steps were added for Queen Victoria's jubilee in 1887. It was here that important proclamations were read. Punishment was also served here, with miscreants attached by an iron collar to the cross.

Also on Marketgate, one of the finest houses in the village, Kirkmay House, which sits in its own grounds within a large gateway. The Georgian Regency era house was built in 1817 by Robert Ingis, the owner of Kirkmay Estate. It later became a hotel and is now, apparently, converted into flats, which perhaps accounts for the blocking up of some of the original windows. 

Next door is St Mary's Church, parts of which date back to 1175. Its graveyard has many interesting tombs, with some  large family plots. I don't fully understand the history of the Scottish church but apparently John Knox preached here in 1559, starting a riot and setting a mob on a path of destruction of churches all the way to St. Andrews! Life is quieter now.

The church door was open but there was a man painting the door, with tarps spread on the floor and paint paraphernalia all over. I judged it best to leave him to it and not try to barge through his working area - so I never got to see inside. 

Beyond the church, on the edge of the village, I found a charming community garden and woodland, quite idyllic, with flowerbeds and lawns giving way to a sinuous walk through a wood bisected by a little stream. Volunteers were busy planting out bedding plants and their friendly border collie came to suss me out and see if I was worth 'herding'.

For me, the most fascinating of Crail's buildings is 'The Doocot' or dovecote. It's a 16th century 'beehive' doocot, with 700 nest boxes, used to house pigeons that provided food - meat and eggs - and whose droppings were used for tanning leather and making gunpowder. In 1503 King James IV ordered all local lords to build doocots to help provide food for the community but, as the years progressed, there were complaints that pigeons from neighbouring properties were eating grain before it was harvested. By 1617 another law was necessary, restricting doocots to owners of land that produced enough grain within 2 miles of the doocot. This was to ensure that the pigeons fed on the landowner's own crops. The building has recently been extensively restored. 

The Doocot stands at the far eastern end of Crail village, overlooking the rocky coastline. There's a large wind farm out to sea, which you may just about be able to discern on the horizon.

Watch out for the rain!!

Tangled

A tiny, tangled front garden on Victoria Road, full of texture and colour. The lilac paintwork is a bold choice but I think it works quite well.

I took the bottom photo first but a few days later the roses were even more extravagant so I took another picture! 

The Plot at Platform One

'The Plot at Platform One' would be a great title for a detective novel, wouldn't it? In fact, it's the name of one of the sites used by Veg on the Edge, our community gardening group. Their volunteers plant raised beds with vegetables, fruit and herbs that anyone can come and pick once they're ripe. This area is alongside the Leeds-bound platform of Saltaire railway station. I find it's quite enjoyable to feast my eyes (if not my stomach) on all the greenery whilst I'm waiting for a train.

They have three raised beds here. It's too early in the season for produce but there are some herbs. The borders between the fence and the sunny south-facing wall of the old Dining Hall (now part of Shipley College) are a riotous mixture of wild and garden flowers and shrubs, and attract bees, butterflies and pollinators. I rather like the flowering plant I've pictured - the flowers are such a wonderful azure blue. It's called green alkanet and is considered (in some places) to be an invasive weed as, once established, it is pretty hard to get rid of. Its flowers are, apparently, edible and can be used as a garnish on salads. 

Scargill's gardens

Scargill's gardens are lovingly tended by the resident estate team, assisted by many volunteers who often come to stay as 'working friends'. The gardens around the buildings have wonderful views up and down the valley and across the fields. Tucked away in a corner is the walled garden. Once, I think, the kitchen garden when the main house was a family home, it's now a quiet place to sit, reflect and drink in the peace of the surroundings. 

Despite the late season, there were patches of colour: cyclamen tucked around tree roots; heathers in containers on the terrace;

a variety of skimmia (I think) with leaves prettily edged in pink; waxy hellebore flowers 

and some late-flowering fuchsia, vibrant even in the drizzle.  

Autumn leaves were falling but there were still enough on the branches to shimmer in the occasional bursts of sunshine. 

Autumn is a wonderful season in the Yorkshire Dales and Scargill is a beautiful place to lap it all up. 

Just chilling

The folks who live in the Stable Block cottages, alongside Saltaire's church drive, have really made the most of their garden area in recent years. They've planted shrubs, roses and flowers, and made seating areas for each cottage. There's a huge conifer that effectively screens them from the road, as well as the trees along the church drive, so it has become rather a pretty and secluded little spot. When I walked past, I noticed a tabby cat stretched out on one of the tables. It was rather a hot day so perhaps it had found a relatively cool spot. 

Secret garden

One of my favourite books as a child was 'The Secret Garden' by Frances Hodgson Burnett. The walled garden at Scargill has very much that kind of feel to it, especially at this time of year when everything is lush and growing with wild abandon. It may have been a dry spring and early summer but despite, or perhaps because of, that some things seem to have had a particularly spectacular year, roses for one. 

It's all rather magical and there are many places to sit and enjoy the peace of nature. 

A stand-out local garden

It was the annual Shipley Open Gardens event last weekend, when local residents open their beautiful gardens to raise money for charity. I had a wander round a few of the nearest ones. I always enjoy looking round gardens, as you know, though I'm a hopeless gardener myself. It was a bright, breezy day, though luckily I only got caught in one short, sharp shower.  

Of those I saw, this one pictured here was my stand-out favourite. It wasn't very big but the owners had really made the most of it, and it had the feel of a country cottage garden, despite being decidedly suburban and surrounded by other houses. It had some beautiful roses, foxgloves, clematis and all manner of smaller, pretty little pops of colour. The colour choices were, I thought, very well judged, with silvery and darker foliage among the various green plants, which gave depth and variety in the borders. 

Bold choices in the seating were unexpected but made stunning focal points. The backdrop of stone walls, painted sheds and coloured fencing added to the country feel. They'd even found space for a couple of raised beds for growing vegetables. What a delight it all was. 

Garden details

Here are some details of plants that I found at York Gate garden. The purple flowers are honesty. My grandma used to grow them. They develop fascinating seedheads: flat, round and papery, that make interesting indoor arrangements. I think the butterfly I caught on my photo is either a small white or a large white! (I'm not much good on butterflies!) 

The veining in the honesty petals really shows up using my macro lens. Spanish bluebells made an interesting image too.  

I love the way the new growth on the conifers is such a very bright green. 

In the small, covered, work area that separates the main garden from the kitchen garden, they'd laid out a series of dried seed heads, old tools and other interesting little things that made good subjects for my camera... 

... as did a couple of 'still life' arrangements in the kitchen garden: an old copper kettle with a lovely patina and a large stoneware jar surrounded by ferns.