Fletcher Moss Gardens

Fletcher Moss Botanical Garden
The rock garden, Fletcher Moss
Type	Park with alpine rock garden and nature reserve
Location	Didsbury, Manchester, UK
Coordinates	53°24′34″N 2°13′49″W / 53.409444°N 2.230278°W / 53.409444; -2.230278Coordinates: 53°24′34″N 2°13′49″W / 53.409444°N 2.230278°W / 53.409444; -2.230278
Area	10 acres (4.0 ha)
Created	1919 (1919)
Operated by	Manchester City Council
Public transit access	East Didsbury railway station (10-minute walk) East Didsbury Metrolink station (15-minute walk)
Website	Manchester parks department website

Fletcher Moss Botanical Garden (known locally as Fletcher Moss) is situated in Didsbury, Manchester, England, between the River Mersey and Stenner Woods.

The park is named after local Alderman Fletcher Moss, who donated the park to the city of Manchester in 1915. It is part botanical garden and part wildlife habitat, but also offers recreational facilities such as recently refurbished tennis courts, rugby and football pitches, and a family-run café.

The main part of the gardens is a walled rock garden that was laid out by the botanist Robert Wood Williamson on a south-facing slope. Williamson sold the gardens and rockery along with his house, called The Croft, to Alderman Fletcher Moss, in 1912.

Fletcher Moss, born in July 1843, was a philanthropist who led many public works in Manchester; in 1915 he persuaded the philanthropist Andrew Carnegie to fund the construction of a public library in Didsbury. He lived in the Old Parsonage by St James's Church, Stenner Lane, having taken over residence from the vicar, a Rev. W. J. Kidd, who left the property complaining it was haunted. In 1919 he gave the gardens to the people of Manchester, declaring he had "determined to offer all that part of my property extending from the Fletcher Moss Playing Fields to Stenner Lane, to the corporation if I could retain the use of it for my life".

Robert Williamson's old house, the Croft, was the location of the first meeting of the organisation later to become known as the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB). In 1889, Emily Williamson née Bateson (Robert's wife) formed a group called the "Plumage League" to protest against the breeding of birds for plumage to be used in women's hats, a highly fashionable practice at the time. The group gained popularity and eventually amalgamated with the "Fur and Feather League" in Croydon, and formed the RSPB.

The main rock gardens are laid out on a south-facing slope and are sheltered from the elements, allowing a great number of non-hardy species to thrive in a micro-climate. Small waterfalls run down the rock gardens into a pond which is surrounded by royal ferns, marsh marigolds, skunk cabbage, Gunnera ("giant rhubarb") and irises. The gardens contain wide range of ornamental trees and shrubs, including Chusan palms, tulip trees, mulberry, dawn redwood, swamp cypress, Chinese dogwood, Adam's laburnum, common walnut, Oxydendrum arboreum, and various dwarf conifers.