Day Trips from Manchester

 In Brief. The Bridgemere Show Gardens  bring together a collection of gardens that have been developed for, and that have often won prizes at, garden shows, such as the Chelsea Flower Show . In total there are 15 diverse and compact gardens located around several lawns.  The gardens are designed to be at their best at different times of year, so not all of them will be in top form at a single visit, but in June many were colourful, and the variety is refreshing. This is all attached to the largest garden centre I have ever seen, so if you have a garden project in mind, there are plenty opportunities to go home with more than you brought. The cottage garden. What's Here? My first surprise on arriving was the scale of the carpark; think theme park more than country house or garden. It quickly became clear that most people do not visit for the Show Gardens, and that the intimidatingly large garden centre (or perhaps the other shops, the cafe or the restaurant) is the main d...

In Brief. Harrow Carr is a Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) garden and visitor centre set in rolling countryside around a stream. The garden itself includes substantial borders, but there are also meandering paths with smaller borders, an arboretum, a woodland walk and a kitchen garden. The adjacent visitor facilities include an outpost of Betty's Tea Rooms  with superior cakes, and a garden centre in case the visit to the garden has provided suitable inspiration. The main borders What's Here? Harrow Carr is a large, mature garden adjacent to a 19th Century spa.  The most labour-intensive component is likely the borders, which include the substantial main borders that occupy one side of the valley down to the stream, and the smaller areas that surround paths that loosely follow the stream.  In my July visit, the borders were lush and often colourful. However, there are many other features to the gardens, which could be visited in any order.  The arboretum includes...

In Brief. The RHS (Royal Horticultural Society) Garden Bridgewater is a modern take on a walled garden and parkland, with imposing visitor facilities. The Bridgewater Garden is based in the grounds of the now demolished Worsley New Hall, and is renovating and reinterpreting parts of these grounds, including a lake and the walled gardens. There are three main facets to the site: a walled garden including a kitchen garden and a "paradise garden", the wider parkland that includes some themed gardens and woodland, and the visitor centre, with shops, a cafe and a garden centre. What's not to like about the development of a modern garden in a neglected historic site? Alas, having now been twice, I find it a bit soulless; there certainly wasn't much colour on either visit, and even with the guide book to try to bring out the concept on my second trip, the overall project perhaps seems a little worthy but dull. Not as refreshing, for example, as Biddulph Grange . Water featu...