Hillier Gardens

On our first full day in Hampshire my mum chose the Hillier Gardens and Arboretum for our trip out. We were hoping that there would be plenty of colourful foliage like this:

My son was relieved to find that the gardens were well geared up to entertain younger visitors with a Spooky Halloween trail:

We got a trail and used the map on the back to follow the clues and to complete activities. The first of these was counting pumpkins in the Children's Education garden. Not the real ones like these but over 30 numbered plaques:

I got slightly distracted by some of the stunning sculptures:

There were plenty of interesting places with nooks and crannies to look in for the pumpkins: 

Of course my son found the musical instrument irresistible:

There were signposts to help us find the places mentioned on the trail:

After making a spider out of sticks and leaves my son reluctantly went for a ride on a broomstick:

Down in the bog garden was one of the trickiest challenges... counting black bats on a grey slate wall! In the end we took the average from about 6 of us as we couldn't quite agree:

We detoured off the trail a little bit to check out the Woodland Pigs who have been introduced to clear out the undergrowth:

Back down into the bamboo forest and my son's favourite challenge, the Spider's Web (check out the video at the bottom of the post). He had to weave in and out of the web and went back in for several attempts:

Next up was a slightly more sedate ghost challenge. The ghosts (beanbags) had to be thrown back into their house:

No Halloween trail would be complete without some potions. So they had provided a mud kitchen in which to whip up a concoction:

To complete the challenge and discover the magic words you had to read using a mirror:

After a restorative snack in the cafe we headed down to the playground. This really is designed for smaller children but my son managed to have fun:

He showed how brave he has got by leaping off the climbing wall:

Our visit ended with a sedate meander around the maze:

All in all a good three generation day out with plenty of fun, fresh air and beautiful gardens. Here is a taster of the fun in a short video: