evergreens – greenbenchramblings

Bridgemere Show Gardens in December

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.

Here we are back visiting our chosen garden each month, with our garden for 2018 being the attached garden at The Dingle Nurseries near Welshpool. This garden is of a totally different scale, atmosphere and style to Attingham Park, our garden for 2017. The garden is open every day of the year bar Christmas Day and on odd days the fees go to the National Garden Scheme.

The nursery is stocked with perennials, shrubs and trees but specialises mostly in the last two, and it is from here that we tend to buy our trees and shrubs. This is a nursery we are delighted to have on our dooorstep. As we move through the entrance we always enjoy the displays of plants with current interest and similarly plants for winter interest and displayed in the first few rows of plants.

So, here we are on the 14th January with our first visit to our new garden, arriving on a dull lightly overcast day. Having never visited before this deep into winter, we entered through the wooden gate green with algae and followed the gravel paths into the garden, not quite knowing what to expect. We enjoy surprises in the gardens we visit!

Evergreens both coniferous and broadleaves lined the paths and are planted in thoughtful groupings. In the first photo a dark, glossy leaved Pittosporum “Tom Thumb” sits comfortably with a Euphorbia, a Brachyglottis and a Hebe. In the second picture two conifers illustrate how different they can be in texture, colour and form.

Early in our wanderings we found this lovely rustic seat which is slowly being eroded away by the weather. Close by the seat glowed the pale green flowers of a Helleborus foetidus.

Hydrangeas appear throughout the garden in the autumn showing their colourful inflorescences in pinks, white and blues, while throughout the winter these colours fade to biscuits, gingers and ivory. In some flowers hints of blues and pinks remain.

Out of season flowers appear here and there on odd shrubs, on others leaf buds promise fresh growth in the spring while berries hang as remnants of their winter harvest.

When tree surgery work is carried out in the Dingle Garden logs are left as habitats for the many forms of wildlife that maintain a healthy ecosystem in the garden.

At the lowest point of the gardens a calm lake affords us a place to stop awhile to look around its banks. A bog garden at one end looks dull and dark at this time of year, with just the deep brown of dead leaves of Gunnera and Lysichiton americanus rising above the mud.

Recent heavy snowfall has caused damage to trees and shrubs, breaking branches of all sizes and crushing foliage. Strong winter winds have added to the damage.

To share more of my photos taken during our wandering and enjoyment of the gardens at the Dingle I have created the following gallery. Enjoy the pictures. The next visit to this garden will be in February.