Garden Jaunts to inspire you
West Country
A four day grand tour of one of the most beautiful parts of the British Isles to experience a selection of our most important historic gardens. These include a restored seventeenth century garden, Henry Hoare’s eighteenth century English Arcadia garden at Stourhead, a Capability Brown garden, one of the finest Gertrude Jekyll gardens at Hestercombe, a twenty first century Piet Oudolf garden, and the new Sissinghurst.
the cotswolds
Four days to take in the gorgeous Cotswold scenery, combined with an insight into the history and creation of a host of great gardens. From a Tudor castle with knot garden to the eighteenth century political garden at Stowe, arguably England’s most romantic garden at Rousham, to Arts and Crafts eccentric and important gardens and twentieth century genius interwoven with interpretations of previous styles.
southern sights
From London to West Sussex, to Hampshire and the wilds of Kent, this four day tour takes in some of the greats! From the world famous Chelsea Physic Garden, to Great Dixter’s unique planting schemes you will be spoilt for inspiration. We also visit a famous Capability Brown landscape garden and see probably the most influential garden in the world, Sissinghurst, as well as contemporary gardens inspired by history.
Tailor Made Jaunts
Our customised tours can be designed specifically for your requirements.
You may wish just to visit gardens owned by artist and writers. See the garden which inspired Francis Hodgson Burnett to write The Secret Garden, with its rose filled walled gardens and far reaching views, embellished by Lutyens and Jekyll. Visit the house and gardens where Jane Austen joined her brother who lived on the estate, and then wrote Pride and Prejudice one year later. See where Virginia Woolf “with the regularity of a stockbroker” would make her way out of the house to her writing lodge in the garden where “(I) shall smell a red rose, shall gently surge across the lawn, light a cigarette, take my writing board on my knee; and let myself down, like a diver, very cautiously into the last sentence I wrote yesterday.” Or experience the painterly garden where Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant sought inspiration for their unique use of shape and colour.
Or perhaps you would like to visit Arts and Crafts gardens, like the best Jekyll and Lutyens gardens, a Fantasy garden made in 1919 with the motto ‘Let Nothing Perish’, and stunning late twentieth century and twenty first century gardens which continue to develop and enrich interpretations of garden rooms.
Or maybe you have your own ideas of garden history and design you wish to discover in more depth? Contact us to see how we can help and like Mary Lennox in Francis Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden find 'the sweetest, most mysterious place anyone could imagine'.