Mr Bunn the baker, Mrs Page the librarian, Master Hemming the tailor, Miss Pepper the greengrocer: long before I’d heard of nominative determinism my sister and I loved to play the card game Happy Families. Ever since I’ve been on the alert for names suitable for the subject’s metier: Isabella Tree the rewilder, Usain Bolt the Olympic sprinter. So I’ve always thought that Bloom was the perfect name for the family of horticulturists who created and run Bressingham Gardens near Diss on the Norfolk side of the border with Suffolk.
Familiar from many garden programme and magazine features as well as plant cultivars, Bressingham was one of the long list of gardens on my ‘to visit’ list. My visit took place at the end of July between two heatwaves when a friend and I stayed two nights in Bury St Edmunds as a hub from which to explore some gardens in the southern part of East Anglia. The first thing to note when arranging to go to Bressingham is that it’s a steam museum as well as plants person’s garden. As long as you’re aware of this and prepared to embrace the notion, a visit to Bressingham is a perfect English day out. You’ll be able to ride the ‘Gallopers’ (the carousel), take a ride on a train around the estate, channel your inner Mr Mannering in the Dad’s Army Museum, eat an ice cream and explore 17 acres of richly planted gardens.
The land dips downhill as you enter through a Wild West sale stockade gate welcoming visitors. Like every garden in the south this summer, the grass looked scorched and dry. But the varied hues of the many conifers here, ranging from deep British racing green to the glaucous blue grey end of the green spectrum lent an air of lushness to the scene. Not usually a major fan of conifers in a garden setting, tending to associate them with a style of garden popular in the 1970s, in this setting they work perfectly. I was won over by the varied forms and foliage of the conifer collection here, as well as the colours. They weep, punctuate island beds and form a backdrop to colourful herbaceous schemes.
Progressing down a gentle slope you reach Alan Bloom’s Dell Garden. Alan (1906-2005) was the father of the current custodian of Bressingham, Adrian Bloom, and began to create the garden in 1953 together with a nursery specialising in herbaceous perennials which continues to this day. Alongside these horticultural pursuits Alan and his family built up a collection of historic engines and rolling stock, farm machinery and army vehicles which form the core of the steam museum. We had a terrific time dodging the sprinklers playing across the Dell. The centrepiece of this part of the garden is an ornamental pond, surrounded by a flinty cobble built wall. A circular summer house with a thatched roof forms a picturesque backdrop for views of the beds filled with Phlox, Kniphofia and Agapanthus. Along with Hosta, Helenium and Crocosmia, these are specialities of the nursery. During the visit I spotted an intense blue Agapanthus Bressingham Blue. At another time of year we might have encountered the waxy white flowers and glossy and rather leathery leaves of another plant raised by Blooms of Bressingham: Bergenia Bressingham White.
A charming feature of the garden is that a narrow gauge railway runs around its southern perimeter, tucked behind a belt of trees. Because of the summer’s extreme heat and the dry state of the grass and undergrowth, the Garden Railway wasn’t running on the day of our visit. A charming sign warns visitors of its proximity. Later in the day, we took a ride on a train powered by a diesel locomotive which followed a route around the woods and farmland north of the site.
Separated from the older part of the garden by a wide track, is Adrian Bloom’s wonderfully named Foggy Bottom Garden. I couldn’t help thinking of my first trip to Washington DC to stay with a dear friend, when I was amused to hear the driver announce the next stop on the Metro as ‘Foggy Bottom’. And yet more intrigued to discover that this was the location of the notorious Watergate Building! Bounded by a belt of ornamental trees, like the original garden, Foggy Bottom comprises large and irregularly shaped island beds which I’ve come to think of as a hallmark of the Bressingham style of garden. A wildlife pond stands at the narrower end of the wedge shaped plot alongside a woodland glade named for Adrian’s late wife Rosemary the centrepiece of which is an elegantly curved wooden sculpture called Spire. Whilst enjoying the varied planting in Foggy Bottom, we came across a white haired gentleman pruning some dead branches from a conifer tree. He explained that the tree was a Cunninghamia, a genus of one species only in the cypress family. As he spoke I realised we were in conversation with Adrian Bloom himself. He was very happy to chat and acknowledged the challenges posed by the extreme temperatures and lack of rain this summer. Naturally we congratulated him on the beautiful garden created by his family.
‘Fuller’: noun: someone whose job was to clean woven cloth, especially wool, and make it become thicker by rubbing and pressing it.
Cambridge Dictionary
Another of the gardens on this mini tour of the southern part of East Anglia was, like Bressingham, a plants person’s paradise; Fullers Mill in West Stow, a few miles from Bury St Edmunds, situated alongside the River Lark. The garden is named for the activity carried out on site in past centuries:
The earliest record of a Fulling Mill on this site is dated 1458. Since then there have been many mills built and destroyed. The process of fulling was to make cloth thicker. This was done by passing the cloth through a series of wooden mallets, driven by a water wheel; causing the cloth to become felted. The cloth was then put out to dry on a flat tentering ground secured by tenter hooks, to prevent shrinkage.
https://perennial.org.uk/gardens/the-history-of-fullers-mill/
Coincidentally the seven acre garden, now run by garden charity Perennial, was also created in the 1950s. In 1958 Bernard Tickner MBE (1924-2017) made the garden from a site covered in scrub and woodland. It remains an area of light woodland, woven through with unusual shrubs, perennials and waterside marginal plants. The river divides the site, and the perimeter of the garden furthest from the carpark and visitor centre is bounded by a lake made from a disused sand and gravel quarry. It’s a wonderfully peaceful place, where proximity to water contributes to the air of tranquility pervading the garden.
Winding paths lead you through a maze of irregularly shaped beds in the ‘Top Garden’ populated with Hydrangea, Hibiscus and lilies. The grove of silver birch here cast welcome shade on a hot July afternoon. The dark maroon spires of false hellebore, Veratrum niger, were a new find for me, and featured in a couple of places in the garden. A belt of white poplars, Populus alba, fringed the river alongside the Top Garden, their silver backed leaves dancing in the breeze.
The path alongside led to Fullers Mill Cottage, which is painted in that soft shade of terracotta called Suffolk Pink in this part of the world. A wooden bridge leads to the mill pond where a flotilla of geese were enjoying an afternoon swim. The Low Garden is surrounded on almost all sides by the River Lark and Culford Stream. Here mature trees are balanced by shrubs and grasses. Clematis are trained up sturdy wooden obelisks. Generous swathes of vivid dahlias and Echinacea line the paths.
On the opposite side of the Mill Pond are the Outer and Inner Quandaries. I’ve not been able to find why these were so named, unless it was because of that familiar sensation experienced by gardeners in a new garden of being spoilt for choice as to what style to adopt or plants to choose. It was refreshing to see a gravel garden being established in this area, with the smoky grey blues of Russian sage (Salvia Blue Spire) to the fore.
Two days, two mid 20th century gardens, hundreds of plants scrutinised. So different in style to Anglesey Abbey near Cambridge, which we visited on the way home. Although established in the early years of the 20th century it owes more to formal 18th century landscaped gardens than the looser shrub and perennial borders of Bressingham and Fullers Mill. Please join me on a tour of the garden at Anglesey Abbey in my next blog post.
Kew Gardens 4th September 2026