Ness Botanic Garden

The following is from the Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest. For the most up-to-date Register entry, please visit The National Heritage List for England (NHLE):

Location, Area, Boundaries, Landform and Setting

Ness Botanic Gardens lie midway up the west side of the Wirral peninsula, which is one of the driest places on the west coast, with an average rainfall of c 750mm and with less frost and less severe winters than the rest of the Cheshire Plain. The Gardens are on the south side of the village of Neston, and Chester is c 15km to the south-east. From the sandstone promontory of Mickwell Brow there are extensive views to the west, across the Dee estuary below and to the Welsh Hills beyond. The soils within the Gardens vary, and are thin, acidic and well drained in its higher parts on the sandstone ridges, whereas the lower areas are on lime-rich clays.

The registered area, bounded to the east by the minor road from Neston to Burton and to the west by the railway line of the 1860s, comprises c 20ha.

Entrances and Approaches

The grounds are entered off the minor road from Burton to Ness. Between the road and the house is car parking.

Principal Building

The Bulleys' house, Mickwell Brow, was built in 1898. It is a large, south-facing, Ruabon brick villa, which was extended c 1927 into an L-plan building when the billiard room wing was built for Alfred Bulley (d 1976) as a twenty-first birthday present. Under the terms of her daughter's bequest Mrs Bulley lived in the house until her death in 1955. It was then converted for use by the university, and is now (late C20) used as a ticket office, shop, café, and as offices.

A large new visitor centre was built c 75m north of the house in 1981, and an adjoining conservatory opened in 1984.

Gardens and Pleasure Grounds

Between the house and the Visitor Centre to the north, and to either side of a prefabricated 1960s Education Room, is a series of formal garden compartments including the Jubilee Garden of 1977. To the east is the Sorbus Lawn (in the early C20 a crown bowling green), separated from Wood's End Lawn to its north by the Herb Garden (earlier two tennis courts) and Laburnum Arch. The last was planted in the early 1970s. Wood's End Cottage, at the north end of the eponymous lawn, was built soon after 1910.

Extending north from those areas, down the eastern border of the site, is a broad grass walk with to the east the Rhododendron Border and, rising behind, Pine Wood. At the north end, beyond the entrance to the glasshouses, the area broadens to the west into the Specimen Lawn in which stand further rhododendrons. The Pine Wood was planted in 1900 as a shelter belt to a fruit orchard; the current rhododendron scheme was largely developed from the mid 1950s. At the extreme north end of the garden is a pair of early C20 gardeners' houses. To the west of the Rhododendron Border is a Rose Garden planted in 1964, to the north of which are the glasshouses. All the glass is of the 1950s and later. Also part of the complex are two long brick ranges of c 1900, now (late 1990s) used as workshops and stores. The more northerly was used in Bulley's time as stables and garaging, the other as the packing shed for Bees Nurseries.

The track between the two brick ranges then runs west, past the north ends of the Herbaceous Border and the Azalea Bed and the narrow lawn between them which form a vista uphill to the house. Beyond this the track gives access to the western part of the site, the northern half of which area is divided into a series of Research Areas to which there is no public access. The southern half, sloping down towards the Dee 1km to the west, includes an area of woodland with azaleas, and borders of meadow flowers and cereals. Flint View and Dee Vista give views west over the river to the Welsh Hills.

The most densely planted and most landscaped areas lie south and west of the house. The bank which slopes quite steeply down to the west of the house was planted as a Heather Garden in 1961. To the south of the house stone retaining walls were built to create terraces in the 1960s and 1970s. The May Gertrude Davidson Belvedere, commemorating a benefactor, was built on the upper part of the terraces in the late 1980s. To the south of the terraces, in a hollow which before Bulley's time had been a marl pit, is the Rock Garden. Although used as a garden since the early C20 the present design has been developed since the later 1950s, with the introduction of tufa rockery stones, the re-coursing of the stream through the garden, and the construction of bridges. On the west side of the terraces and the Rock Garden is Pingo, so-called from the field name on the mid C19 Tithe map and meaning a small enclosed space, a west-facing wooded slope which forms the southern continuation of the Heather Garden. A waterfall over a sandstone outcrop was constructed c 1996. At the bottom of the slope below Pingo the same water source feeds the three pools which form the Water Garden, created c 1970.

The south-east part of the site, lawn with trees, is an overflow car park. At its south end is Great Dale Hey, where on a slight hillock stands a stone seat contrived from the portico from Hansen's Lodge in Birkenhead. From this there are views west over the Dee estuary.

Maps

• OS 6" to 1 mile: 1st edition surveyed 1871-1872, published 1872
• OS 25" to 1 mile: 3rd edition surveyed 1909, published 1912

Description written: 1999

Edited: February 2000

Updated: January 2023