One of the pleasures of staying at The Gibbon Bridge Hotel is the opportunity to wander around its spectacular gardens. They are one of hotel’s finest assets and have provided thousands of guests much enjoyment over the years. To verify this, the hotel has also received the accolades of judges in the North West “ Britain in Bloom” Awards for nine consecutive years (1996 – 2004).

However, the 23 acres of grounds have not always been as beautiful as they are now. The land of the Simpson family farm was very poor, boggy and full of reed beds. The main gardens that you see from the Restaurant were once the home of the family’s duck and geese pen, and an old dyke. It has taken a great deal of hard work, continual investment and planning to transform the once sour, marshy ground as you see it today.

It was Janet’s late Mother Maggie, her Uncle John and David Singleton a local landscape gardener who originally designed the gardens. It was important in their planning that they used the natural farmland around and to design a garden that would become established and mature as the Gibbon Bridge dream unfolded. The land had to been mole ploughed and drained. Beautiful lawns were created, a large rockery and a central pond. Plus borders were filled with perennial shrubs and young saplings such as chestnuts, acers, hornbeams and birch. However, within the development the three alder trees, which you can see at the bottom of the garden were left to mature and now stand at over 30ft high.

Robert Lowe, Head Gardner worked on the gardens from the early days and has seen much investment and expansion over the years. New planting and projects each year are carefully thought out to attract a variety of wildlife, birds, insects etc. The four ponds that have been created in the grounds are bound with newts, toads, frogs, and a variety of fish – carp tench, chub etc. Nesting birds include coots, water hens and recently a pair Greater Spotted Woodpeckers.

Maggie had here favourite plants, especially auriculas and sweets peas. And today Alice, the hotel’s resident florist still uses sweet peas along with a variety of other flowers, which are specially grown to create beautiful floral arrangements for the hotel and restaurant.