Tollcross Rose Garden in Glasgow

Thank you to everyone for your encouraging and sympathetic comments on my last post.  I’m pleased to tell you that I have been able to get more rest and am feeling less exhausted.  Hooray for the October holidays – both the Dafter and I were much in need of a week off school.  Yesterday Michael (who has no such holidays) looked after the Dafter and gave me a whole day off – and the weather was spectactular!  I went to see the International Rose Garden at Tollcross Park on the East side of Glasgow.  Growing up in Portland, Oregon, I used to love going to the International Rose Gardens there – and I even took part in the Rose Festival Parade one year in high school!  So I was interested to see what Glasgow’s rose gardens were like, and I was not disappointed.

Firstly, the main part of the rose beds are laid out in the form of a rose!  As you can see on the map:

Map of Tollcross Park, showing the rose-shaped rose gardens.

The weather was beautiful – sunny and warm.

Section of garden with climbing roses on obelisks.

Mid-October is clearly not the optimum time to see roses, but we’ve had such a fantastic Indian Summer after our dark and dreich June and July, that the flowers have all been blossoming while they have the chance:

Climbing roses, Tollcross Park, 12 October 2015.

The Winter Gardens are currently being refurbished, so I shall have to come back when they are open again:

Winter Gardens, being worked on.

I was not the only visitor to the roses:

A Red Admiral butterfly enjoying the day.

I would have had to climb up a tree to get a really good view of the rose-shaped section of the garden, but you get an idea from the top of the hill:

Standing near the top of the rose-shaped rose gardens, looking down at Tollcross Road bordering the southern edge of the park.

There is an impressive “Mansion House” at the top of the garden, which forms a pretty backdrop:

Looking up towards the Mansion House, across the rose-shaped rose garden.

Still lots of roses in bloom:

Roses…

I particularly enjoyed that each bed had a map, with the names of every variety.

A red rose, I believe the variety is “Coronation Street”.

And I wonder if my American readers (or Scottish, for that matter) will be as surprised and amused as I was to see that Tollcross Park is the…

Who woulda thunk it?

I read my book and ate my lunch, and felt so very happy and relaxed.

And then!  I met a friend here:

The “Room De Luxe” in the Willow Tea Rooms, Sauchiehall Street.

The funny thing is, my friend is born and bred in Glasgow but had never been to the Willow Tea Rooms.

Room De Luxe, side wall.

So it was a lovely day out!  I am looking forwards to going back to the rose gardens next summertime, but it would be hard to top the pleasure they gave me on my visit there yesterday.