Though there has been some form of building on this site from the middle ages what is visible today is the result of work from the 18th century up to the late 20th century as the property passed through a convoluted chain of inheritance. The structure of the garden dates from 1728 when Sir Walter…

This started simply enough when two friends decided that it would be nice to have somewhere to sit and enjoy the view down Coverdale. That was in 1989 and they are still building! The Forbidden Corner was never conceived as a public garden or visitor centre, it was and largely still is a private folly…

The best way I can describe this is a plant zoo, as it falls in to a category of its own. It’s not a garden, though it does in some ways actually resemble a Victorian Municipal garden, but nor is it a botanical or physic garden. What it is, is a plant centred visitor attraction…

This garden has received great praise but I’m not really sure why. My first reaction on visiting it, and one I haven’t change was “they dug up the body but they haven’t brought it back to life”. I think the problem is Tim Smit is extremely good at visitor attractions, and for that he should…

This is another one of those gardens that take a little finding, I only found it by serendipity, but it is worth the effort. Set in the middle of the Lord Leycester Hospital in Warwick; it’s enclosure by medieval timber frame buildings gives it a sense of being old but no one seems clear about…

This garden is sadly no longer open to the public following its sale in 2011, but as I visited it in 2010 and it is a very attractive garden I’ve chosen to include it in any case. You never know it may reopen in the future, but that is purely speculation. There has been a…

Though the house dates from the 16th century this is a 20th century garden dating from 1903 when Gerald Loder (later Lord Wakehurst) purchased the property until 1963 when Sir Henry Price bequeathed it to the nation. Two years later Kew Gardens leased if from the National Trust and they still run it. Covering an…

This is not a garden; but a visitor attraction, not that there is anything fundamentally wrong with visitor attractions per se. A garden though is created as a personal folly in purely personal search for pleasure through the manipulation of nature, l can’t help but feel the motivation for Alnwick Garden was of a far…

Horace Walpole first found Strawberry Hill in 1747 and having purchased the house in 1749 set about rebuilding it in the Gothic style with a garden that developed as the house did.  A very well connected and influential man of letters he was an important character in the development of gardens in the 19th century.…

This is a private garden open to the public and one of the best modern gardens in the south west of England. It is far more of a garden than the nearby Eden Project or Lost Garden of Heligan and one of my favourite gardens of all time. It all started in 1976 when Ray…