Described by many visitors as “the best gardens they have seen”, Bressingham Gardens has continued to develop over recent years, well beyond the two major 6 acre gardens created by the late Alan Bloom and his son Adrian, both very different in contrast and famous for what the Bloom family have contributed to British Horticulture. Renowned perennial plantsman, Alan Bloom created from 1953 to 1962 his 6 acre Dell Garden devoted to displaying around 5,000 different species and cultivars of perennials in Island Beds, of which there are still around 50 in the garden, informal in shape and set off by the flowering grass lawns and pathways. Adrian Bloom, with his wife Rosemary, began their private garden Foggy Bottom facing a low lying meadow, in 1967. As the family business, Blooms Nurseries grew rapidly in the 1970’s, managed by Adrian and his brother Robert, so Adrian created a trial garden concentrating on its year round appeal, with a wide collection of conifers and heathers in the 6 acre meadow in front of the house. Foggy Bottom has changed dramatically since those days as the trees, shrubs and conifers have matured, with many disappearing to allow sweeping, broad avenues to reveal colourful, and season changing vistas which combine woody structure plants, as well as perennials, grasses, ferns and bulbs.

From 2000, the two separate main gardens have been joined by the interconnecting Fragrant Garden and Adrian’s Wood, the latter devoted to plants of North Amercian origin, and containing magnificent specimens of Giant Redwood, now 90′ (25m) in height, brought back as a seed by Adrian in 1960 and planted by him in 1964. At the entrance to the gardens, Adrian Bloom designed in 2002 and 2004 a Summer Garden and Winter Garden, using a range of plants to create maximum impact at specific times of the year, and above all, giving ideas to visiting gardeners that they can use in their own gardens. His “rivers of plants” have become of increasing interest to garden visitors, and the plant combinations in all gardens something which can be taken away to copy elsewhere.

It should be added that the gardens are still a family affair with Alan Bloom’s son in law Jamie Blake keeping the Dell Garden to a high standard, adding some of his own plant selections to the many introduced by Alan, and bred by him and his long time helper, Percy Piper. Rosemary Bloom sadly died in 2014, but Adrian Bloom continues to change and add to Foggy Bottom, with in 2015, the opening of a newly planted woodland garden, to be called Rosemary’s Wood.


Stunning Photo Opportunities in the Gardens