It’s green up north
ALMOST a year after it was originally scheduled to do so, the much-anticipated new RHS Bridgewater opens on May 18. ‘It’s the first time in more than 100 years that the RHS has taken on a garden project of this size,’ explains programme director Anna da Silva—and ‘it is a real shot in the arm for northern gardeners,’ adds RHS vice president Alan Titchmarsh.
Indeed, everything about the new garden is larger than life, from its 154-acre plot in the former grounds of Worsley New Hall in Salford, once home of the Earls of Ellesmere, to the scale of the project, begun in 2017, which has made it the biggest of its kind in Europe. It is the society’s fifth public garden and the first to be so close to a densely populated area; almost eight million people live within an hour’s journey.
Bulbs and plants have been dug in by the tens of thousands and, in the new), 29,000 edible plants are being grown to supply the cafe. One of the most charming stories about the site dates back to 1851, when Queen Victoria first went to stay at Worsley New Hall. She travelled by barge, moving serenely through the waters—which were dyed blue in her honour—of the famous Bridgewater Canal, which had been dug almost 100 years previously on the orders of Francis Egerton, the 3rd Duke of Bridgewater, to convey coal from Worsley to Manchester.
