Well we are off again to the Bridgemere Garden Centre Show Gardens near Woore in Northern Shropshire, the opposite end of the county to our place. It was a warm dry day overcast at times with the sun bursting through whenever a gap in the cloud cover allowed it to. Just perfect for a day of appreciation of plants and a day that makes my camera happy.
The Cottage Garden was the first port of call as usual being just inside the entrance gate. It immediately looked so colourful, much more so than in any other month up to now. The fruit trees were heavily laden and perennials flowering profusely adding up to a pure cottage garden style.
As usual we next made our way towards the pond area not expecting to see much change, but we had such a surprise when we looked at the area around the pond. On the way we enjoyed looking at the hostas and pulmonarias in the bed with a very unhealthy looking champion cherry tree at its centre. The cherry is dying quite rapidly now with bare branches at the top and down towards halfway. The subtle planting beneath it however was worth a close look.
Sunshine lit up the foliage and flowers of plants around the pool, astilbes, hostas, iris, ligularia and even a water lily.
There were so many colourful areas within the show gardens, sometimes provided by flowering or berrying shrubs, others by perennials planted in large groups such as agapanthus and hemerocallis
The flowers that dominated the show gardens this month were dahlias, the reliable late summer and early autumn stars, particularly those with interesting coloured foliage supporting the flowers.
We particularly like to see their flowers working well with contrasting foliage colours and we prefer by far the more single flowers rather than the hefty oversized doubles. There are so many different forms of flower here so all visitors can find those they like best.
In one part of the garden dahlias are planted in single cultivars borders surrounded by short box edging.
There were a few cultivars that I didn’t like at all, mostly those flowers which seemed oversized or showing weak colours.
Even if there were no dahlias to be seen there were colourful patches of perennials and shrubs throughout the gardens.
In some cases the cameos that attracted us consisted only of colourful foliage that sat well together.
We were drawn towards a patch of Rosa rugosa partly because of its flowers but mostly because of its colourful large spherical hips.
I will finish off with the most colourful and most interesting border of all in July, a border that had failed to attract us on previous occasions. An herbaceous border planted with a carefully selected groups of perennials. The Lutyens seat adds extra interest and a place to see and listen to the noise of the many insects attracted to the plantings.
greenbenchramblings 