Garden details

Telephone

01379 686900

Location

Admission

Adults £8.75; Concessions £8; Children £5. Gift Aid included. Steam train extra. RHS members free (Member 1 only) in May & October.

Features

• Herbaceous plants
• Fine conifers
• Disabled facilities
• Rhododendrons

Comment

There are two major gardens at Bressingham, both made by the Bloom family and, until recently, open at different times - Alan Bloom's Dell Garden, and Adrian Bloom's Foggy Bottom. There is no better place to learn about herbaceous plants - what they look like, how they grow and how to place them - than the Dell. This is a six-acre complex of about 50 island beds, which act as a trial-ground and conservation resource for the herbaceous and alpine plants (over 5,000 of them) for which Alan Bloom is famous. The new Summer Garden was designed by Adrian Bloom to provide a new and more dramatic entrance to the garden. It has a stunning display of Crocosmia and Miscanthus cultivars interplanted with other perennials. The Blooms are keen to emphasise that the Dell Garden is not a museum piece but a carefully tended collection of perennials, developing and growing all the time. The same is true of Foggy Bottom, which Adrian Bloom started planting in about 1975 as a garden for year-round seasonal colour and interest. Its centrepiece was his unique collection of conifers, collected from all over the world and tested for English conditions. They were, for many years, the dominant plants in the garden, and he used them to show off the innumerable contrasts of form, colour, texture and shape between different cultivars. Then he began to use them in other plant combinations - with ornamental grasses, perennials and shrubs - chosen to give a succession of colour, texture and other interest throughout the year. Renovation and renewal are ongoing - new beds are constantly developed and new plant associations created. The All-Seasons Bed is a recent example: its 'river of blood' is a meandering 30ft planting of Imperata cylindrica 'Rubra'. A new winter garden was planted in 2006. Another new feature is Adrian's Wood, two acres connecting the two gardens which is being planted with North American natives. The net result is that all parts of Bressingham Gardens continue to be an inspirational source of ideas for the smaller garden.