RHS Rosemoor - the formal gardens

[puddleshark]

On my journey into North Devon, I detoured to take in a garden, of course...





Rosemoor is rather impressive - once a private garden with an impressive collection of rare plants, the estate was donated to the Royal Horticultural Society in 1988, and it is now a 65 acre garden with brand new formal gardens.

In 1923, Lady Anne Berry’s father, Sir Robert Horace Walpole, bought the Rosemoor estate to use the house as a family fishing lodge, positioned as it is next to the River Torridge, which was then rich in salmon. Following the death of her father in 1931, Rosemoor became home to Lady Anne and her mother...

Lady Anne’s interest in gardening began in 1959, when she met noted plantsman Collingwood ‘Cherry’ Ingram in Spain while recuperating from measles caught from her children. He opened her eyes to the beauty of the Spanish maquis shrubland and this became her first of many expeditions in Spain and England to observe plants. Ingram also invited her to visit his garden in Kent and to take some cuttings and young plants back to Rosemoor to help start her own garden...

https://www.rhs.org.uk/gardens/rosemoor/about-rosemoor/history

I was a little overwhelmed at first by the size of the gardens, and the sheer number of visitors. But once you leave behind the crush of visitors in the rose garden, the gardens are large enough to absorb the crowds, and there are plenty of quiet corners where you can admire the fantastic collection of plants, all of them neatly labelled!

Some pictures of the formal gardens:


The Cool Garden, with its rock walls and streams. Very clean and modern, and very different from the gardens I normally visit.






The Queen Mother's Rose Garden, which was amazingly over-the-top and blingy, with towers of clematis and climbing roses, spikes of foxgloves, drifts of poppies and campions.





Not being royalty, I found it all a bit too much to take in... But the bees like it.














Rosa 'Munstead Wood'.





In the Cottage Garden:











The formal gardens were perhaps a little overpowering, as formal gardens can be sometimes. But the other gardens - the Stone Garden, and the Mediterranean Garden, and the Stream Garden in particular - were full of fabulous planting. Pictures to follow in another post...

Comments

[kotturinn]

Lovely. I can well imagine parts were somewhat overwhelming. Looking forward to the rest of the photos.

[puddleshark]

Thanks!

Yes, the formal gardens were perhaps a bit much for me. The overall effect of all that planting was gorgeous, and just a little overpowering. But I did love the quieter gardens at Rosemoor.

[house_wren]

Thanks for taking me to the blingy garden!

[puddleshark]

You're welcome!

I thought our local rose garden was a little bit extravagant, but it is subtle and restrained compared to the rose garden at Rosemoor!

[bunn]

I completely agree with you about the formal gardens. My favorites are the cottage garden and the Mediterranean garden.

My Mum loves Rosemoor. She has an RHS membership so she can bimble over there whenever she likes and since they now have dog friendly days, I've been a few times recently.

[bunn]

... now I think of it, I am wondering if the Mediterranean garden you refer to is the one in Lady Anne's garden or if there's another Med one somewhere else. I love the Lady Anne's garden one. It's not so big and polished as the grand gardens on the lower side of the road.

[puddleshark]

Yes, the Mediterranean garden was in Lady Anne's garden. I loved those little gardens on the other side of the underpass - the Mediterranean Garden and the Stone Garden. Much quieter and more contemplative. More my thing than over-the-top rose gardens.

I enjoyed seeing the variety of doggie visitors to the gardens almost as much as the flowers. 😊