My trip to Birmingham wasn’t limited to visiting The festival of Quilts and exploring Birmingham. My daughter Danute accompanied me and she had her own agenda. She loves crafts, she knits and crochets but I am not sure if she will ever become a quilter. She has another kind of passion: pelargoniums (or geraniums). She is building her own collection by visiting nurseries and exchanging new plants with other pelargonium lovers in Lithuania. She even shops for plants online!
The thing she wanted to visit most when in UK were Fibrex Nurseries located only about 36 miles away from Birmingham:
Fibrex Nurseries hold The National Pelargonium Collection. With over 2000 varieties on show you will never see another collection quite like it and has become the largest of its kind in the world encompassing as it does both cultivars and species.
As I said, I know almost nothing about pelargoniums. I know some very important and rear plants may not look spectacular. My photos only show those that I found interesting or pretty.
After looking through the entire collection of about 2000 plants the shopping began:
Danute bought nine plants that she packed and placed into our check in luggage. It arrived safely.
On a way back to Birmingham we stopped in Stratford Upon Avon. Stratford is a major English tourist town due to it being the birthplace of William Shakespeare, whom many consider the greatest playwright of all time. There are few houses there related to Shakespeare’s life and here there is one:
This is the house on Henley Street, one of the town’s oldest streets, purchased by W. Shakespeare’s father in 1556, and it was in 1564 the birthplace of his son William.
The town has more old buildings:
The Old Thatcher Tavern claims to be the oldest pub in England:
We were not so sure about that but we decided to try some fish and chips and beer and it tasted great:
We also walked to Holly Trinity Church with Shakespeare’s grave inside:
and also had a nice walk in the park by the Avon river:
We had a good time and we felt we achieved our goals visiting Fibrex Nurseries and Stratford Upon Avon. We took train back to Birmingham to see more quilts but these memories will stay with us forever.
Wow! I started to pick my favorite geraniums, Patricia Andrea, Martin Pope, May Day, but then the list got too long. So beautiful! Also, the history of Stratford upon Avon very cool and I can almost taste the fish and chips! Thank you for sharing!