A Little Rain at the Blooms of Bressingham

We were very fortunate to have Adrian Bloom take us on a private tour of the Bressingham Gardens - from the older sections designed by his father Alan and his newer Foggy Bottom gardens.  The grounds are composed of huge sweeps of perennial beds and really beautiful specimen trees.

For people who lived in this area and were visiting the fabulous nursery - it shows exactly how the plants will perform and give them great ideas about what might look good together.

There's nothing like having a whack of property to set off a great tree.

Can I grow it in my garden?   No, but sure makes a pretty picture.

Over and over again I was struck by the timing of bloom of plants - so completely different than in this part of North America.  You look at this picture and say, my what a great combination.  However, here they don't bloom together in my garden at all, and in fact both the Astrantia and Tradescantia were completely done in my garden at this point.

But my Crocosmia hadn't even begun to bud.

It just shows you really need to plant lots of Kniphofia to get a good show.  One little plant just looks like a match stick.

Campanula 'Kent Belle'.  This formed a nice big beefy plant and had a great purple colour.

More is more when it comes to plants - the Blooms show it's always better not to be stingy.  And then of course the best part is after seeing all those wondrous specimens growing, you can go to the nursery and knock yourself out.  There is so much we could learn about running nurseries here from the Blooms.  First of all - look at the colour-blocking.  Then, how 'bout those fancy nice round benches for the product?

How polite is this?  "Seasonal Clearance"  How welcoming!  And look, the plants appear to be alive.  So different from the places I've been here where they've got a horrid bench of nearly dead crap with bright orange stickers.

Even I might give over my life to keep these splendid water-pigs alive.

And for people who are new to gardening, or in a hurry, or just need a spot of colour - look how easy have they made it for their customers to spend their money.

As you go inside the store, should you have an empty hand, wouldn't you want to pick up one of these Streptocarpus?  Here they come in one colour - purple.  Sigh.  If this Dibleys display wasn't just too much to take - it gets worse - look at the display at the Hampton Court Flower Show - and this was just one half of it.....A M A Z I N G!  (And, as you may have guessed a seque to my next post from the Hampton Court Flower Show)