An Evening at Bluebell Cottage Gardens
As a fairly frequent visitor to Bluebell Cottage Garden and “occasional” buyer of plants from the nursery I was delighted to discover that there was a pop up open evening last week in aid of the National Garden Scheme charities. Whilst the gardens are glorious in the day time they take on a whole new beauty in the softer evening light and it was wonderful to wander around with my camera and also meet like minded people there to enjoy the food, wine and plants!
Quite a few of the people who came along to the event were new to Bluebell and we all the enjoyed the tour that owner Sue Beesley gave us. Some of us (ahem) were taking photos with a wine glass in hand at this point, so please excuse the wobbles on this unedited shot!
Back to the garden and to give you a potted history, Sue took over the nursery and 2 acre garden in 2007. 12 years on, Sue and the Bluebell team have won numerous gold medals at RHS shows and the stunning gardens are so popular that they’ve been shortlisted for The Nation’s Favourite Garden competition run by the National Garden Scheme and The English Garden Magazine.
And it’s easy to see why, so for those of you who haven’t yet visited, here’s a little flavour of the garden in the height of summer……
This is a view of the summerhouse through a delightful combination of helenium, echinops and achillea with the magnificently tall Rudbeckia maxima in the background.
A close of the echinops and you can see how well it’s colour complements the yellow of the Achillea ‘Gold Plate’. And it would have been impossible to count the bees there were so many buzzing around!
A view from another angle with a purple haze of verbena bonariensis in the foreground.
Echinacaeas thrive at Bluebell (unlike in my garden)and a Peacock butterfly was posing nicely for me. I think this one is Echinacea purpurea ‘Rubinstern’ and like all the perennials in the garden it is available to buy in the nursery.
Tall spires of agastache rising out of a sea of Stipa tenuissima fluffiness.
And what a superb yellow this ligularia is. I love the contrasting bronze stems. Yellow is a colour that I am getting to like more and more.
And here it is again complemented perfectly by the red persicaria and the gold of the Stipa gigantea in the far background. You’ll have to take my word for it with this shot, but there’s a pond in there somewhere.
And did I buy anything…… well of course I did, it would have rude not to!
Thank you Sue and team for hosting the event. It was a fabulous evening!
