This will be my final visit to the show gardens at Bridgemere Garden Centre as we have now wandered around once a month from January to December 2025.
We set off on a dull overcast day on a journey marred by slow and very odorous tractors and trailers, going so far and collecting a long queue of angry drivers. When we arrived at Bridgemere we went straight over to the gardens, having decided to photograph evergreens especially conifers which are quietly dominant throughout the gardens.
However the first shrub to catch my eye was a beautifully variegated holly, surely one of the best, Ilex ‘Golden King’. Close by, this conifer with long glaucous needles and loaded with cones was the first conifer we came across, the first of many.
We followed a gravel pathway alongside a border full of evergreen shrubs and trees, both conifers and broadleaved. The two below looked so different under the dull sky, one a gentle pale green and gold the other a silver grey, its needles being more spaced out along each stem. Its next door neighbour is a much denser bush.
The show gardens use trimmed hedges of evergreens and topiaried ones to give strong structure or sometimes as frames for feature plants or other features. We were most impressed by the cloud pruning at the entrance to the Japanese Garden.
At times large runs of conifers are grown together to emphasise their differences in colour, texture and shape. Being all different heights and widths adds so much more interest.
A mixture of coniferous and broadleaved evergreens always look even better. It seems to be the case because the broad leaf shrubs have more surface area of leaves to reflect the sunlight and also that variegated forms have a tendency to have paler coloured foliage.
There are many broad leaf evergreens at Bridgemere some even in flower to give us extra enjoyment. The first set of photos feature these flowering specimens.
Many of the broadleaf evergreens are variegated which gives more interest and attraction for us gardeners. Even rhododendrons have been bred to have interesting foliage such as silver or golden streaks of colour down the main veins of each leathery deep green leaf.
Now these following block of photos show variegated foliage shrubs and the next block shows evergreen shrubs with interesting foliage colours.
We have only looked at trees and shrubs this month so far but there were a few beautifully patterned, arrow shaped leaves around which were from one of my winter favourites, the Arum Lily, Arum italicum. These are native wildflowers here and we often see them in hedgerows where their arrow-shaped leaves look so dramatic. We have a good collection of differently patterned foliage ones at home so we were pleased to see quite a collection at Bridgemere.
So we have reached the end of our monthly visits to the Show Gardens at Bridgemere Garden Centre, where we found plenty of interest each month with many changes as the year moved on from season to season.
Next year we will be making monthly visits to a totally different type of garden.
greenbenchramblings 