A visit to Peter Rabbit’s garden

We’ve just come back from a lovely long weekend in the Lakes with my parents. Despite the weather forecast predicting biblical rain, we got away with just one or two moments of light drizzle and most of the time it was dry, not too cold and sunny – the perfect weather for autumn adventuring.

We packed so much into those four days that I’ll probably write a few posts on our trip. It made me wonder why we’ve only done day trips to the Lakes before and never actually stayed long enough to have a good look round and really see what the area has to offer.

We stayed in Bowness-on-Windermere in a three-storey house just around the corner from The World of Beatrix Potter, also known to Sam, Flo and most other little ones as ‘Peter Rabbit’s house’. I’d visited before with Rog and Sam about three years ago and we thought then just how much better it was than we were expecting. It’s just such a magical little place and as you walk through the exhibition, with its dimmed lights, gentle music and cute animal figures, you kind of feel like you’re immersed in the stories and the characters really come to life.

We always used to read the stories to Sam and Rog in particular always used to choose The Tale of Jeremy Fisher as he loved how Sam called him ‘Jelemy’ and getting him to learn the name of ‘Alderman Ptolemy Tortoise’ always made him smile. I smiled too when I saw them again in the exhibition – it only seems like two minutes since we were there together with a toddler Sam.

One of my favourite parts on both visits was the Peter Rabbit garden, an RHS award winning collection of plants and vegetables inspired by those which feature in the Beatrix Potter illustrations. It has the lettuces that Benjamin Bunny nibbled on in the stories and the gooseberry bush where Peter got stick as he tried to run from Mr McGregor. Most importantly, it uses Peter Rabbit’s blue coat on a scarecrow, just like in the book.

The museum is small enough for little ones not to get bored, and big enough to feel like you’ve had a really nice afternoon out. Oh and the tea and cakes in the cafe aren’t bad either.

x Julia