Elworthy Cottage

A specialist nursery for herbaceous perennials and clematis and one acre plantsman's garden situated at the eastern end of the Exmoor National Park. The garden has been developed to blend sympathetically with the natural beauty of the surrounding countryside and to encourage wildlife

Elworthy Cottage Garden and Nursery

 This is a small nursery situated at about 600 ft above sea level at the eastern end of the Brendon Hills in West Somerset. We specialise in unusual herbaceous perennials, especially hardy geraniums, geums, grasses, pulmonarias, astrantias, crocosmias, violas & primroses. We also now stock an expanding range of clematis. We have a large range of choice and uncommon plants as well as traditional varieties.

We prefer to grow small numbers of a wide selection of different plants, rather than larger numbers of a few varieties, therefore most plants are only available in limited quantities. If you are coming from a distance for a particular plant or if you require more than a few of any one variety please telephone first to check availability. If you wish to order large numbers of a particular plant, please let us know well in advance and we will do our best to propagate them for you.

We regret we are unable to offer a mail order service xcept for snowdrops in February and March.

We do not use peat in the nursery or garden. Generally the plants for sale are grown in soil based compost. We find these plants establish themselves much more quickly in the garden than plants grown in peat based compost. The use of pesticides in the nursery and garden is kept to an absolute minimum and only as a last resort.

A one acre plantsman's garden situated 600ft above sea level at the eastern end of the Brendon Hills in West Somerset. It has been developed to blend sympathetically with the natural beauty of the surrounding countryside and to encourage wildlife. Island beds have been created to accommodate our ever growing collection of plants, chosen to give year round interest. The garden also contains many interesting and unusual trees and shrubs.

Elworthy Cottage Garden and Nursery

Three years ago we constructed a small wildlife pond to encourage frogs and toads into the garden. One night at the height of the mating season in February 2002 we had 18 frogs in the pond at once; in 2003, one afternoon at the end of February we counted 35 ; in 2004 we were back to around 20.

Some areas of grass are left to seed for the wildlife and in spring wild primroses abound. We have built a new hedge-bank which has been planted with wild flowers with a hedge of mixed native species on top. We have a large bird population in the garden, including many thrushes, and in summer the garden is a haven for butterflies.

An added attraction for visitors is that most plants seen in the garden can be purchased from the adjoining nursery.

When the garden opens in March there is already plenty of colour with a large variety of hellebores, pulmonarias, primroses, narcissi and dwarf bulbs as well as interesting alpine areas. As the season progresses, herbaceous perennials and clematis become more evident. In May alliums, chaerophyllum and aquilegias give a colourful display as well as our wildflower areas. June is the peak time of flowering for our large collection of hardy geraniums (about 250). In late summer and autumn our collection of grasses is at its best; also looking good are crocosmias, heleniums and asters.

This winter was much harder than we have been used to in recent years with the ground being frozen for over a week and one night we had a fall of 13" of level snow! Fortunately this seem to have caused only minor damage in the garden although it did cause both our polytunnels in the nursery to collapse. It did mean that the frogspawn appeared much later this year than usual.

2008 saw the first summer since we have lived here that we have had no house martins nesting.

The garden was featured on HTV's Garden Calendar in October 2000 and HTV's Roots and Shoots in March 2001

See also:

www.elworthy-cottage.co.uk

Contributed by: John