In a garden near you …..…. and a bit of Chorlton’s history

Now, I am always in awe of other people’s gardens.

Our garden, 2022

I know what I would like ours to look like, but a combination of laziness and bad design means ours will always be the one that time forgot.

So, I am always ready to visit that annual event where people throw open their gardens in a good cause.

All of which is a lead into this year’s Chorlton Open Gardens which runs from Saturday 25th till Sunday June 26th.*

"The first Chorlton Open Gardens event was held in June 2011 in aid of the charity 'Freedom from Torture’ (formerly the Medical Foundation for Care of Victims of Torture).

Twenty-nine sites, including gardens and yards, allotments, a school garden, local plant nursery, and grocery roof garden were open to the public. A thousand programmes were sold by four local businesses and volunteers.

The feedback was very positive and people enjoyed the communal atmosphere, the variety of garden spaces, refreshments, and learning more about garden design, flowers and vegetables that can be grown locally”.**

Urban flowers, 2022

All you need to visit the gardens is a £5 programme, one for each person, with accompanied under-13s free. Programmes contain our handy map; they will be available from a number of shops in Chorlton in late May.  Click here for list of shops and their opening times.**

But prize gardens are of course nothing new to Chorlton.

And I rather guess Samuel and Mary Ecroyd were pretty pleased with their garden in their new house on Nicolas Road.***

Number 91 was a bigger property than their previous one on Oswald Road and while the garden may have been much the same size there was still open land to the rear with views across to the Baptist and Unitarian Chapels on Wilbraham Road as well as some of the posher houses Chorlton had to offer.

And in 1909 Mr Ecroyd was awarded a prize for one of the “Best-kept Gardens in the district” at the Chorlton Society’s Show.

A prize garden, 1909

Now the Society had been established in 1894 and in its way is another indication of how Chorlton had moved from a rural community to a suburb of Manchester.

In a little over two decades many of the fields had been lost and in their place were rows of new houses with small neat gardens and yards which cried out for flowers, bushes and orderly borders.

It was almost as if in the advance of brick and glass the new inhabitants needed the greenery, and according to the newspaper reports the shows were an important part of the community.

Chorlton prize winners, 1909

So, nothing much has changed then.

Where to buy a programme https://www.chorltonopengardens.org.uk/help-information/where-to-buy-a-programme/

Location; Chorlton

Pictures; Our garden, 2022, and wild flowers on a wall, Manchester Road, 2022, from the collection of Andrew Simpson and Mr Ecroyd ‘s “Best-kept Gardens in the district” from the Manchester Courier, 1909, courtesy of Sally Dervan

* Chorlton Open Gardens https://www.chorltonopengardens.org.uk/chorlton-open-gardens-2022/

** Where to buy a programme https://www.chorltonopengardens.org.uk/help-information/where-to-buy-a-programme/

***Winning the best kept garden on Nicolas Road in 1909, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/2018/08/winning-best-kept-garden-on-nicholas.html