Thursday 26 May 2011
We depart from your designated pick-up and head south stopping en-route for refreshments. On arrival at our hotel dinner will be served.

Friday 27 May 2011
Today, after breakfast, we will spend the day at the Chelsea Flower Show. The Chelsea Flower Show holds a rare position as a great British tradition and an exciting source of inspiration and advice. One of the highlights of the show is the collection of over 20 full-sized show gardens. Inside the Great Marquee visitors have their senses ravished by the hundreds of floral displays, many of them incorporating new, rare and unusual plants. Other popular features here include flower arranging, floristry and garden design marquees, courtyard gardens, window boxes and hanging baskets.

We return to our hotel for dinner.

Saturday 28 May 2011
This morning, following breakfast, we visit Wisley Garden, which is where the Royal Horticultural Society shows the gardening public how it should be done. Here the highest standards of practical horticulture are deployed in the setting of a splendid old site rich in fine trees against a backdrop of other plants, all impeccably labelled.

This afternoon we visit Sissinghurst in Kent.  This famous garden was created by Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson from 1930 onwards and became the most admired English Garden of its time.  Few great gardens live up to their reputations so effortlessly as this. Sissinghurst is a five-and-a-half acre connoisseurs' garden consisting of a series of small romantic areas enclosed by the surviving parts of an Elizabethan mansion. It never disappoints its visitors, it has the power of enchantment, but it is also an unending source of inspiration for all gardeners.  Sissinghurst is surely as close to gardening perfection as you can get, and it continues to be one of the most copied flower gardens in the world.

We return to our hotel in time for dinner.

Sunday 30 May 2010
Following breakfast we will check out of the hotel, before continuing our homeward journey north.  En route home we have a real treat when we stop at the gardens of Tatton Park in Cheshire, England's most complete historic estate with beautiful gardens which have an exuberant 19th century flavour. There is much to see including a sunken garden with a pergola and rose-beds, a serpentine network of lakes, a walk through well wooded lawns and a unique fernery designed by Lewis Wyatt.  By one of the lakes is an exceptional Japanese garden with an arched bridge and a Shinto temple which makes a wonderful picture under a canopy of old trees.

We continue north and expect to arrive home in the evening.

3 nights dinner, bed and breakfast at the Holiday Inn, Guildford (or similar).  All rooms have private facilities.

All day ticket to Chelsea Flower Show.

Admission to the gardens of Sissinghurst, Wisley and Tatton Park.

Comfortable coaching throughout.

Services of a Brightwater Holidays representative.

Single room supplement £60.00

Insurance prices to be confirmed

Dundee - Outside Discovery Point

Perth - Bus stop in Canal Street at Tay Street end

Kinross - Moto Services, M90

Edinburgh - Outside front entrance Marriott Hotel, Glasgow Road (formerly Royal Scot Hotel)

Glasgow - Outside Millennium Hotel, George Square

Dunfermline - Bus stop layby outside Lauder College

Lockerbie - before Townhead Pub, High Street

Carlisle - outside Premier Travel Inn, Junction 44, M6

Preston - outside the Tickled Trout, Junction 31, M6

Knutsford Services (M6)

Any suitable service station on M6/M1 southbound

All pick-up-points are subject to minimum numbers.

A 3-day tour by air from Edinburgh (other airports on request) is available departing on 26 May 2011 from £445 per person