RHS Bridgewater Garden

 Wednesday 15th June 2022 at RHS Bridgewater.

Today we spent most of the day exploring more of the new RHS Bridgewater Garden.

The first priority was breakfast in the café. M had a bacon bap with a massive amount of excellent bacon that filled her up so much that she didn't need any lunch!

Yesterday, we had spent most of our time walking around the far end of the garden so today we started with the walled gardens. These were the original walled gardens to the Duke of Bridgewater's house and they have now been set out as a formal garden like this section:

Or a kitchen garden, and another area as a "Paradise" garden, an area in which to relax and unwind.:

Quite large sections have been left as wild grass areas, with lovely paths cut through them so that you can wander about or stop and have a picnic at one of the many tables provided.

Ox-eye daisies were very much in evidence with vast patches of them.

In one corner were a series of small gardens, each only about 15ft by 10ft. The first garden showed what NOT to do in a small garden.

Each subsequent small garden showed different ways of improving the garden and making it more resilient and ecologically friendly. Such a clever idea.

A large space at the end was being cleared as the "Discover Soil Garden" from the recent Chelsea Flower show, designed by Juliet Sargent, will be installed there in due course.

Clearly, there is still huge potential to develop the site but what has already been achieved is quite beautiful. The garden is very different from Wisley, which has large areas of formal plantings such as rose gardens; Bridgewater is very "wild" by contrast.

After returning to MM, we cruised the one mile to Worsley where we turned MM around in front of the original site of the Duke of Bridgewater's mines and hence the very beginning of "Canal Mania" and the Industrial Revolution. The mines are up the little arm on the right.

 We then cruised back towards the marina, where we will leave MM tomorrow morning, and moored up again. You might just be able to make out the marina on the far right of the photograph, so it is very close.

Tomorrow morning, we will put MM into the marina and go home by bus and train for a while. So please watch this space for when we return. It's been a marvellous few weeks (we've even managed to smile in retrospect about the notorious Wigan 21!).

Today: 2 miles, 0 locks and 2.1 hours (for power).

Trip: 232 miles, 161 locks and 127.0 hours.