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The Cottage Garden

Quintessentially English, with its chocolate box cottage and picket fence, brimming with traditional country favourites.

The garden was designed by John Ravenscroft, the very first Bridgemere owner, in conjunction with Jacqui Moon from the Women’s Institute, for RHS Chelsea Flower Show in 1988. It was a triumph! Winning a gold medal, the Wilkinson Sword Award for the best garden in show and the Lawrence Medal for the best exhibit in any RHS Show! Originally called the ‘Women’s Institute and Bridgemere Country Woman’s Garden’, the cottage in the garden was formally a very old pigsty.

The garden includes unique rare scented peonies, bearded irises and agapanthus. Planting is based around pastel colours to enhance the cottage garden theme and showcases bedding plants, which are mainly grown from seed in our greenhouses together with a kitchen garden.

Highlights

Our Gardener Sam recommends you look out for these stunning plants:

Paeonia ‘Cora Stubbs’, with its raspberry pink petals surrounding a mixed centre of creamy white and the palest pink staminodes. Paeonia ‘Monsieur Jules Elie’, which has huge fragrant blooms, produced in abundance and packed with elegant, light pink rose style petals. Paeonia ‘Nancy Nora’ an early flowering peony with soft blush pink petals that fade to a creamy white. Also rare Irises including ‘Pink Pussycat’, with it’s graceful, large, true pink flowers and ‘Snowy Owl’ with it’s ruffled, pure white flowers and beards. What could be more pretty or perfect!

Plants to look out for...

Click on a plant to find out more:

Paeonia ‘Shirley Temple’

An herbaceous perennial which grows to 80cm, with dark green, foliage and fragrant, double, rose-pink flowers that fade to white.

Paeonia ‘Cheddar Gold’

A bushy, herbaceous perennial which grows to 80cm with dark-green leaves and stems bearing large, fragrant flowers with semi-double, white outer petals, surrounding yellow staminodes.

Paeonia ‘Eden's Perfume’

A clump-forming, herbaceous perennial, which grows to 75cm tall, with dark green, foliage and fragrant, fully double, pale pink flowers, appearing in late spring to early summer.

Rosa ‘Pat Austin’

A shrub rose which can grow to 1.2m, with large, fragrant flowers which are bright coppery-pink inside and pale copper outside. It will flower continuously from summer until the autumn.