RHS Garden Bridgewater

This is a fairly new garden, so some areas are still under development. What is there already is very much worth seeing. We went to eat in The Stables, which is quite a walk but my husband pushed me in the wheelchair. The stable area is cobbled and slightly tricky but it was also possible to sit outside it on level ground. We ate inside and had lovely stone-baked pizza. We looked round the vast walled garden. Lots of lovely things to see, including herbs, spring bulbs and blossoming trees. The paths are fairly smooth bonded gravel or paved. Lots of benches. We didn't try to get to the woodland areas, but steps were marked on the map so if we had, we would have been able to avoid those. The cafe in the visitor centre has a decked area outside, as well as indoor level seating area. There is also a garden centre. This is a great place to visit whether disabled or not, and it will be good to return in different seasons. Best on a nice day though. Not much shelter outdoors if irains. It's fantastic to see how much the RHS has considered the needs of disabled people.

Visit to RHS Bridgewater - well done for your accessibility. Possibly the best I’ve encountered. Lots of thought has gone into the accessibility of all the grounds. I use a walker, and on this occasion I wasn’t a wheelchair user. Even managed to get up to the Chinese garden and lake, although the paths are new and need bedding down a little bit more.

I took my elderly mum to Bridgewater, it was somewhere we were really looking forward to visiting. Unfortunately all the disable parking bays were full when we arrived (mid/late morning), and we ended up parking a good walk away in the second carpark in order to get an end bay so wheelchair usage wasn't an issue at the end of the day. First stop was the female disabled toilet in the welcome centre. This building has won an architectural award, however the facilities fall woefully short of what I consider acceptable in a building only two years old. The toilet itself was miniscule and could barely fit a wheelchair user and carer. The door had a life of its own, swinging open and shut at will. A sign told us to "move back" but in such a tiny space there wasn't anywhere to move back to. I eventually grabbed the door, wrenched it shut and managed to bolt it before it decided to open again. This mechanism was obviously a replacement for however the door had originally functioned, and I dread to think how useless that was. (At the end of our visit, we waited for someone else to use the toilet and watched it swing back and forward as the poor person stood there hoping it would remain closed.) Once inside it became obvious that there was no way of telling from the outside whether anyone was inside or if the door was stuck. My poor mum became upset with the constant knocking and rattling by those outside, who appeared oblivious to me shouting that the toilet was occupied. It ended up by a staff member trying to free the door and alarms going off. We did have a pleasant walk around the site, which gains it a partial star, and the staff were pleasant. We visited the plant shop before leaving, thinking to buy some plants for our garden. The shop didn't have any trolleys to fit on my mum's wheelchair so we ended up leaving empty handed as we had no means of carrying anything. A very poor experience that we won't be repeating. It's almost unbelievable that this is a brand new site. It's made me rethink my RHS membership, and if I'd paid to go in I would have been seeking a refund.