Bluebell cottage garden in rural Cheshire

Cottage garden in rural Cheshire

Bluebell Cottage Gardens and Lodge Lane Nursery- is a beautiful hidden

gem tucked away in a quiet corner of the Weaver Valley, Cheshire. During spring,

its bluebell woodlands put on a spectacular show and in summer the herbaceous

borders come to life in a whirlwind of colour and foliage. 

Bluebell cottage garden in rural Cheshire

Backing on lo the Trent and Mersey Canal, (he land features a garden and plant nursery, 

a three-acre wildflower meadow and ancient bluebell woodland. The nursery is an RHS partner

nursery, specialising in hardy herbaceous perennials, but it's a far cry from the

commercialism and large-scale production of corporate plant shops. Owners Sue

and David Beesley deliberately avoided turning Bluebell Cottage Gardens into

a one-stop garden shop, preferring to let visitors spend some time exploring the

scenery and picking up new skills. "It's never going to be some kind of Wyvale," says

Sue, describing the cosy tearoom which offers self-service tea and coffee, locally-

made cakes and Cheshire ice cream. "The idea of this little place is that you make

your own tea, sit down, read some books. It's quite nice because we get people

wandering in and perching up for the afternoon during a hailstorm."

Bluebell cottage garden in rural Cheshire

In keeping with this informal set up. Sue has added a new 'demonstration

vegetable patch', complete with raised beds featuring classic English vegetables,

permanent fruits and salad. Here, visitors arc free to take notes, swap lips and

generally learn more about vegetable growing. "We just show people round and

exchange ideas, and people can discuss their own vegetable plots," says Sue.

"I think it's especially useful for relatively novice veg growers. You might want

someone to show you around their allotment, but how do you go about that — if

you walk onto an allotment there's usually all these people looking fierce and busy!

So we've set up ours as a place to stand around and chat about vegetable growing.

We've also got a little shop with some basic seeds, plants and organic fertiliser."

Bluebell cottage garden in rural Cheshire

COTTAGE GARDEN ADDRESS BOOK:

Bluebell Cottage Gardens    Lodge Lane Nursery is open Wednesday to Sunday and on Bank Holidays.

To plan your visit or to find out about the education and leisure events held throughout the year, visit: www.lodgelanenursery.co.uk, email: info@lodgelane.co.uk or call 01928 713 718.

Sue is creating a garden for this year's RHS Show at Tatton Park, from 22 to 26 July. For further

information about the show, visit: www.rhs.org.uk/whatson/shows/tattonpark2009.

Find out more about Reaseheath College's horticulture courses at: www.reaseheath.ac.uk.

BLUEBELL COTTAGE GARDEN

Since moving into the cottage in February 2007, Sue and David have

transformed the overgrown land into a flourishing cootage garden and nursery. Apple,

cherry and pear trees can be found in a canal-side orchard, and the 1.5-acre

garden includes a pond, a rockery and an abundance of colourful flowers.

A circular wall encloses an area next to the cottage, the size of a typical

suburban back garden, where Sue uses her skills to illustrate what can be

done in a relatively small amount of space. "It's the size of most people's back

garden," she says. "I use it as a way oi encouraging people to do away with

creating straight borders around square gardens. Because in the summer you

can't see the wall, it's filled with flowers and foliage - it's really pretty."

Looking to the future, determined Sue has two main ambitions for the

cottage gardens and nursery: firstly, to develop the demonstration vegetable plots; and

secondly to create a new exotics garden, inspired by late gardener and writer,

Christopher Lloyd. "Sometimes people have a very English concept of what a

garden ought to be," she says. "One of my instincts is to have a tropical garden

with plants like bananas. One of the reasons I really love Christopher Lloyd's

garden in East Sussex is that he ripped out the rose garden, planted it with

exotics and broke all the rules. He'd plant pink next to orange and say, 'Come

on then, tell me it doesn't work'."

Bluebell cottage garden in rural Cheshire

It's this progressive way of gardening that drives Sue to keep changing and

evolving the gardens; creating new vistas and altering planting arrangements to

ensure a sense of continuity and flow. An archway to one of the garden's many

sections is inscribed with the words 'Cette Vic M'aime', meaning 'This life loves

me'. The site is so full of colour and such a place of tranquillity, that it's hard to

see how anyone visiting Bluebell Cottage Gardens could think otherwise.