John Ravenscroft was a TV gardener decades ago and the founder of one of the UK’s largest garden centres, Bridgemere. He developed the centre for years and we used to visit quite frequently always making for the “Rare and Unusual Trees and Shrubs” section first of all.
He sold up to a national string of garden centres and still lives on neighbouring land alongside the garden centre, where he has developed the 56 acre ‘Cherry Tree Arboretum’. The arboretum opens occasionally for the National Garden Scheme and we visited on the day of its last opening for 2024.
We knew we would find some interesting trees and shrubs here when we spotted this cotoneaster with beautiful and unusual coloured berries.
We were here to appreciate unusual plants but also the range of autumn colours in the landscape. We were not disappointed! Even as we walked a few hundred yards of gravel trackway taking us to the more open areas we found such an array of unusual and beautiful plants. Each one stopped us in our tracks for a closer look.
We soon became aware that John is a serious lover of deciduous Euonymus with their colour foliage and unusually structured flowers and fruits.
Jude and I have long been fans of deciduous Euonymus and grow several in our garden, so it was a great surprise to find one here we had never seen before, the pale rather ghostly white, lemon and orange E. hamiltonianum ‘Koi Boy’.
John is also a fan of one group of trees with the common factor being more to do with shape and structure than foliage and fruits, and that is fastigiate cultivars of trees. We grow several at home including Oak, Amelanchier, Crab Apple and Sorbus. All small compared with the specimens at Cherry Tree.
Now for a look at wider views showing the variety of trees and shrubs, foliage colour, shapes of trees and groups of trees and shrubs.
We spent plenty of time searching for labels!
What a remarkable arboretum! So glad to have visited at last.
greenbenchramblings 