ROSEMARY’S WOOD
This living tribute to his late wife is one passionate gardener’s lesson in how to furnish a woodland with plants
When plantsman Adrian Bloom – son of Alan of Blooms of Bressingham fame – planted some trees along the southern boundary of his new garden Foggy Bottom in the late 1960s, he was thinking more shelter belt than woodland glade. It wasn’t until 50 years later that he turned his expert eye to this peaceful spot and began carpeting the floor under the now mature trees with an array of choice woodlanders. In early spring, the woods now erupt with statuesque shuttlecock ferns among a sea of bright blue scillas, alongside choice dicentras and hellebores, maidenhair ferns and the fresh green leaves of greater wood-rush
“This was one of my wife Rosemary’s favourite parts of the garden,” Adrian says. “It was full of bluebells and I think it took her back to her childhood. She could always see its potential and used to urge me to do more with it, so when she
passed away in 2014, I felt it would be a fitting tribute to start planting it up.” Before the leaves have come onto the trees, the light is dappled and intermittent here, giving ideal conditions for mat- and clumpforming shade-lovers to thrive.
Adrian emphasises the importance of clearing perennial weeds first when planting in woodland. “It might also be necessary to trim back tree roots a little in places to create larger planting pockets,” he advises. As the soil in Rosemary’s Wood is quite free draining, it was bulked up with composted bark and well-rotted cow manure, and giving new plants a generous duvet of mulch helps to give them a head start.
“When it comes to choosing what to plant, the trick is to go for a contrasting palette of colours,” Adrian says. Among a myriad greens, he has waves of the maidenhair fern Adiantum venustum, with its delicate fronds that emerge in a rich pinky-bronze shade – captivatingly pretty when low sun shines through them. Although it is technically deciduous and looks incredibly delicate, this fern is hardier than it appears and will spread obligingly over time.
Picking up the same warm tones is the ornamental sedge Carex comans ‘Bronze Form’, which features quite dense tussocks of narrow leaves. Adrian recommends it for growing with snowdrops, particularly the plumped-up cultivar Galanthus
‘S. Arnott’, which he grows in abundance. Equally good is the greater wood-rush Luzula sylvatica ‘Aurea’, which Adrian feels is underrated. “Its leaves tend to get scorched and tatty in the sun but in shade it makes an excellent ground-cover plant.” Another good variety is ‘Marginata’, which has a creamy white edge to its ribbon-like leaves.
Part of this area of the garden, not more than 200 metres from the River Waveney, is liable to flood in winter, so a wooden boardwalk, built by Matt, one of Adrian’s three sons (and older brother of garden photographer Richard Bloom), has been installed in the lowest-lying area, taking you up and over the small pond that was dug in the late 1970s. The boardwalk is a good place from which to admire one of the most spectacular plantings in the woodland – a collection of shuttlecock or ostrich ferns Matteuccia struthiopteris, whose lime-fresh fronds contrast beautifully with the Turkish squills Scilla bithynica that cover the ground here. These obliging little bulbs come out a good month or so before the bluebells and are a lovely shade of bright mid-blue.
Other flowers thrive in the woodland, too, dotted among the carefully chosen foliage plants. In early 2014, Adrian and Rosemary made a trip to a wholesale hellebore nursery in Evesham, Worcestershire, and returned with their car crammed with selected Harvington hybrids, including a rich ruby red, so a lot of these have been
“When it comes to choosing what to plant, the trick is to go for a contrasting palette of colours”
planted here. There are hardy geraniums, including Geranium phaeum ‘Springtime’ and masses of epimediums. One of Adrian’s own plant selections that he introduced into cultivation in 2008, Dicentra formosa ‘Spring Magic’, also features. Related to creamy-white Dicentra formosa ‘Pearl Drops’, another Bressingham introduction, it has rich pink flowers and fern-like grey-green leaves that sit well alongside the bold pleated foliage of Veratrum album.
Another striking piece of Matt’s handiwork in the woodland is an elegant spire sculpture in Rosemary’s honour, constructed from three pieces of oak, that fills the space where a silver maple tree came down in a storm. Some ten metres high, it has been surrounded with a planting of the drought-tolerant Mondo grass Ophiopogon bodinieri to disguise the concrete footings that keep it firmly in place.
“I think if I had known I was going to develop this part of the garden, I might well have paid more attention to the trees I planted,” Adrian says. Yet the ones that are here are attractive enough and, anyway, it hardly seems to matter now that the under-storey of this serene spot has been furnished with such beautiful spring colour. “Rosemary had no formal training in horticulture, yet she was always very much a part of this garden,” Adrian says, “and I hope she would approve of what we have done.”