Olivia Assheton
The cottage garden
- Credit: RHS / Andrew Montgomery
The UK’s biggest and most ambitious horticultural project for many years opens in Salford.
The Royal Horticultural Society are preparing for the grand opening of their first new garden in more than a century. RHS Garden Bridgewater has been created on the site of the historic seat of the Earls of Ellesmere – Worsley New Hall in Salford.
Designed by renowned architect, Edward Blore, Worsley New Hall was a grand Gothic-style house built in the 1840s. Alongside the hall, extensive and magnificent gardens were landscaped over a 50-year period by notable designers of the day, including William Andrews Nesfield. Sloping areas were transformed into formal terraces with ornate fountains, a lake was created as well as a croquet lawn, tennis court, and an 11-acre walled kitchen garden. When Queen Victoria visited in the 1850s, the Earl of Ellesmere commissioned a Royal Barge to bring her down the Bridgewater Canal which he had dyed blue in her honour.