As September ended and October began we took a week’s holiday in the North Yorkshire Moors where we stayed in a cottage on an isolated mixed farm hidden in the wilds.
We decided to stop on the journey up at RHS Bridgewater, the newest RHS garden, on the outskirts of Manchester. We had visited twice already so looked forward to seeing how it had developed.
The car park, roads and paths surrounded by gardens designed by Tom Stuart-Smith afforded visitors a very warm welcome, with grasses in their biscuit, coffee and ginger colours of early autumn, sitting below young deciduous trees.
We did not have long enough to explore the whole garden so decided to concentrate on just two areas, the walled garden and the Chinese Stream Garden. To get to the walled garden we walked closely along colourful herbaceous borders with occasional shrubs.
The photos below show tall white-flowered actaea to the left while on the right the border featured geranium and
Below one of my favourite perennials, sanguisorba is mingled in with an umbel possibly Selinum wallichianum to great effect. The small tree to the right is a Zanthoxylum simulans or the Sichuan Pepper.
We turned left into the first part of the walled gardens, the vegetable garden designed by the design team Harries Bugg. Sadly weeds had invaded several of the raised beds and the overall effect was of sadness and neglect. I did find a few interesting places though.
In total contrast to the garden above the Tom Stuart-Smith designed area of the walled garden was as good as we expected after enjoying it so much on our previous two visits. There were so many highlights deserving of a closer look.
The lean-to greenhouse in this part of the walled garden was a contrast to Tom S-S’s design around it.
The rest of Tom S-S’s area is so satisfying that picking out highlights is difficult, but I shall have a try.
We then made our way across the gardens towards the Chinese Stream Garden, which we had heard had moved on nicely now, so we arrived there with eager anticipation.
We were not disappointed. We saw how well the plants had become established and the stream had become a sparkling central feature running down the slope through the garden.
To make our way back to the car we approached the welcome building taking a circuitous route through the ‘Worsley Welcome Garden’.
From RHS Harlow Carr we made our way northward towards the North Yorkshire Moors, where we were going to stay in a converted barn in a valley side.
greenbenchramblings 