Norwich Gardens - Early September | Jeremy Bartlett's LET IT GROW blog

It’s the Heritage Open Days time of year and lots of Norwich’s historic buildings are open for the public to look around. This year Vanna and I finally managed to visit the Bear Shop Garden on Elm Hill and had another visit to The Bishop’s Garden, both open for Heritage open Days, and looked at some other gardens as well.

The Bear Shop on Elm Hill has a lovely garden which is thought to be based on a design by Gertrude Jekyll. It is made up of several small compartments and gradually slopes down towards the river via a series of terraces. It is full of annuals and perennials, including several Monarda plants, Amaranthus, Lysimachia “Firecracker”, Phlox and Japanese anemones, Dahlias and interestingly shaped clipped hedges and shrubs.

Next stop was the Briton’s Arms, a beautiful timber-framed medieval building. At one time it was a beguinage, the home of a small group of single women who devoted themselves to a life of prayer and charitable work within the community. Later it became a public house and is now an excellent tea room. An unexpected bonus was the garden, which is small but an absolute delight, with a mass of plants growing in pots and cracks in paving, a mass of different types of foliage and flowers.

On to The Bishop’s Garden, which I wrote about in June. It was lovely to see the garden at a different time of year. The herbaceous borders are fading, though the dried seedheads of Alliums and cardoons are very architectural. But the lush tropical foliage of Tetrapanax is magnificent and there are plenty of roses in bloom and great wild carrot and lesser knapweed seedheads in the meadow.

Then back home via the lovely Cathedral Herb Garden, which was founded in 2005 and open daily all year round (10am – 5pm) and past St. Stephen’s Church, which has a beautiful display of Rudbeckia and grasses outside.