Oxford University has a botanical garden in the centre of the city, but it also has an arboretum out in the country. Is it called the Harcourt Arboretum. We decided to check it out one weekend in the summer. The summer in the UK was pretty toasty so we were wondering about the wisdom of this but it proved to be fine. When we first arrived, one of the team advised that the meadow areas get very warm in the afternoon so we might be best to start there. We followed this advice.
The meadows were very peaceful but were already getting rather warm. I suspect, if we had got there much later, we would have cut short our time there. Because there hadn’t been any rain for ages, the meadows were quite parched. Not much in the way of meadow flowers with the grasses rather brown. It would be interesting to see what it looks like in the spring when the moisture content is higher.
After the meadows, we headed into the wooded areas. Lots of paths crisis-cross the woods and the map that they provide was not totally representative of the layout, but we did get ourselves on track after a couple of diversions! This was by far the nicer part of the arboretum for us. The cooler conditions in amongst the trees definitely helped but the variety of trees was very interesting. There was a time in the UK when wealthy individuals sponsored expeditions around the world to collect samples of plants and trees. Consequently, UK arboretums are filled with examples of flora from all manner of places. This is no exception. The last section we came through was probably the nicest part from our point of view. That was a good way to end the visit.
