The cotswolds

Day 1

Sudeley Castle

Sudeley Castle was partly built in 1442 and is the only private castle in England to have a queen buried within its grounds: Katherine Parr, the last of Henry VIII’s six wives is buried in its chapel. Although the original early gardens at Sudeley are not extant, restoration was carried out by the Victorian owners, John and Emma Coucher Dent, between 1856 and 1859, trying to faithfully reproduce the Queen’s garden in solid yew. This was unusual at the time when Victorians usually swept all before them regardless of ancient gardens and period architecture surrounding them. There are now more than 80 varieties of roses in the Queen’s Garden.  The Knot Garden is another ’Tudor’ garden with 1,200 box hedges forming an intricate geometric design, interspersed with coloured gravel, based on a pattern on a dress worn by Elizabeth I in a famous portrait, The Allegory of the Tudor Succession, which hangs in the Castle.  

Stowe

This 250 acre landscape park showcases the work of some of the most important garden designers of the seventeenth and eighteenth century and provides a commentary on changing tastes, fashions and political thought. As such it is a complex garden, but historically very important. There are so many temples and monuments that this was the first garden to issue a guidebook to its visitors in explanation. Stowe became a centre for political intrigue after Lord Cobham was dismissed from office in 1733, stoking his fury at what he and his cronies saw as Walpole’s corrupt self-serving system of government. Employing  Vanbrugh, Charles Bridgeman, William Kent , James Gibbs, and 'Capability' Brown led to the building of many fine monuments, notably the Temple of British Worthies, with sixteen busts of thinkers and men of action admired by the ‘true’ Whigs, and the creation of many serenely composed vistas. There is also a very large memorial by Kent to Signor Fido, 'an Italian of good Extraction', Lord Cobham's favourite greyhound...Signor Fido. 

Day 2

Rowsham

Rousham is a magical garden by William Kent, on a framework made by Charles Bridgeman in the 1720s for the soldier Major Dormer. There is a series of serpentine walks which drew the visitor round through haunting glades to look at architectural buildings, classical statues, vistas, with the contrast between dark and shade very marked. He extended the estate by creating a three arched ‘eyecatcher’ – a sham ruin to lead the eye and below it he placed the Cuttle Mill. He added Praeneste, based on the Praeneste in Rome with seven arches containing Roman busts of Dormer’s classical heroes. Some of the buildings are gothic, such as the castellated Gothic seat. The effect is romantic, as Richardson says: “the apogee of Kentissime”. Kent was like a set designer, brilliantly telling a story through movement from one episode to the next, with sharp contrast between leafy glade and full sun, water, classical sculpture and classical and gothic buildings appearing suddenly.

Blenheim

Blenheim Palace is an eighteenth-century reward built by the nation for the first Duke of Marlborough for his victories over Louis XIV. The architect was Vanbrugh c1705, and Henry Wise, who also was responsible for Kensington Palace Gardens and Chelsea Hospital gardens, designed the formal garden, with fortifications and regimented parterres in the Anglo-Dutch Baroque manner. During the 1720s Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, after the death of her husband had the River Glyme turned into a canal complete with triumphal bridge. In 1764 the celebrated Lancelot Brown turned this canal into a serpentine lake and naturalised the woods, designed a cascade and placed belts of trees in strategic positions, entirely relandscaping and naturalising the parklands for the 4th Duke. During the 1930s the formal garden theme at the west of the palace was reintroduced when the 9th Duke commissioned Achille Duchêne to design a fine water parterre. 

Day 3

Sezincote

Sezincote is truly an exotic house set in exotic gardens. Built by Samuel Cockerell for his brothers John and then Charles who made a fortune in the East India Company in the late eighteenth century, it is a magnificent Mogul palace, probably the only Mogul building surviving in Western Europe. In the Mogul style of Rajasthan, complete with minarets, peacock-tail windows, jali-work railings and pavilions and an unusual curved orangery the house is stunning. The building was inspired by Thomas and William Daniell’s paintings of Indian architecture, and with some input from  Humphry Repton: “I was pleased at having discovered new sources of beauty and variety, which might gratify that thirst for novelty, so dangerous to good taste in any system long established; because it is much safer to depart entirely from any given style, than to admit changes and modifications in its proportions, that tend to destroy its character.” The layout of the stream is also very similar to nearby Adelstrop, so it is possible Repton also designed this. Thomas Daniell designed the Indian bridge and temple and limestone grotto.  Brahmin bulls are on top of the Indian bridge, and there is a bronze three headed cobra, the goddess Souriya and a mushroom-shaped fountain. In front of the house is the Persian or Paradise garden with straight canals, paths and yews, created in 1964 by Lady Kleinwort with advice from Graham Stuart Thomas, garden adviser to the National Trust. 

Snowshill

Charles Paget Wade described a garden as:

‘Tis a man’s rest, children’s fairyland, bird’s orchestra, butterfly’s bouquet’

This is a quirky Arts and Crafts delightful fantasy garden, the old gardens of the sixteenth century Manor were reshaped after 1919 by Wade who inherited the family sugar plantations in the West Indies and gave up work as an architect. Wade was imbued with the William Morris tradition of craftsmanship and medievalising and this coupled with his family motto ‘Let Nothing Perish’ led him to amass a treasure trove of over 22,000 curiosities of clocks, pipes, carts, tapestries and mousetraps and filled the manor to the rafters so that he had to sleep in one of the outbuildings. Wade believed that form rather than flowers was more important in the creation of a garden: ‘a delightful garden can be made in which flowers play a very small part, by using effects of light and shade, vistas, steps to changing levels, terraces, walls, fountains, running water, an old well head or a statue in the right place, the gleam of heraldry or a dome garden temple.’ The garden is packed with steps, steep slopes, walled enclosures, a long blue herbaceous border, the Armillary Court with ten yew trees and a golden sphere, the Well Court with a medieval dovecot, a lily pond, a Venetian well head, and a byre with a statue of Mary in a blue surround. Not to mention ‘Wolf’s Cove’ an entire model village, currently being restored.

Hidcote

Hidcote is an early twentieth century garden and the ultimate in the Arts and Crafts ideal of a series of garden rooms, with fifteen distinct gardens. It was greatly celebrated and much visited by the cognoscenti in the lifetime of its owner, Lawrence Johnstone; Edith Wharton described it as ‘tormentingly perfect.’ Johnstone was an avid plant collector, travelling to South Africa and China and keen to ‘plant thickly’ in his structured garden. It was the first property to be taken on by the National Trust principally on the merit of the garden rather than the house (in 1948).

Kiftsgate

Kiftsgate is privately owned by the Muir family, and the garden has been nurtured by three generations of female gardeners. Heather Muir in 1920 was inspired by her neighbour Lawrence Johnston of Hidcote Manor. She decided to let the garden develop organically and the two generations of female gardeners who followed her continued to let the garden evolve rather than radically change. It is a garden of surprises:  the Long Walk between the high yew hedges rises gently and at the top there are magnificent views down the escarpment to the Vale of Evesham. The tennis court was recently replaced with a wonderful pool and modernist fountain.  

Day 4

Barnsley House

Barnsley House was built in 1697 of Cotswold stone and was the first garden of the hugely influential Rosemary Verey who moved there in 1951.  She proved that gardening was an accessible art form and introduced a grass walk and parallel Lime avenue which becomes the famous Laburnum walk. There is a Yew walk, Doric temple, Gothic summerhouse and stone gardeners by Simon Verity who stand by the Iron Gate to a flowery potager. Verey said that shapes, textures and leaves were as important, even more important than colour. If colour is allowed it must be: “a classic harmony in the warm (not hot) purple-crimson colour range, ‘where the silver foliage of the artemisia in the background sets off the composition.’ Shape is all and white is an important colour in borders; she inspired many gardeners to look afresh at unlikely combinations and redefine the beauty of the unexpected. Rosemary Verey has designed famous gardens around the world—including gardens for Prince Charles, Sir Elton John and the New York Botanical Gardens. 

Miserden

‘When I let myself into the garden at Miserden, it was so still, so enclosed in its own bubble of tranquillity, I thought I might have tripped into a golden afternoon of the Edwardian era. Generous herbaceous borders run down either side of a central lawn: echinops, plume poppy, inula, stately spires of delphinium. A pergola of roses and a wide yew hedge shield a kitchen garden. Timeless. Gorgeous.’ Says Anna Pavord of Gardens Illustrated about the garden of this seventeenth century house with east wing by Edwin Lutyens. The twentieth century garden has a fine Arts and Crafts design with contributions by Lutyens: an arched loggia beautifully framed with magnolia and wisteria, with a yew walk running through the centre of the garden with arches reflecting those of the loggia, and a bench. There are two sets of grass steps, planted with lobelia and alyssum, which look like a waterfall in mid-summer. There is an ancient mulberry tree, believed to be planted in 1620, and the rill with fountain and stone summerhouse were built to commemorate the Millennium. 

Bourton House

Bourton House is an eighteenth-century house with a modern garden that was restructured in 1983. The garden is laid out like a renaissance garden with topiary, a knot garden, parterre, orchard, kitchen garden, but the planting is in arts and craft style with very deep herbaceous borders and stunning colour combinations with a mass of tender planting. The head gardener, Jacky Rae, who worked for the original owners Richard and Monique Paice,  says there are around 160 different types of tender plant in the borders with the majority being grown on site; Jacky takes around 2000 cuttings every year to grow on for the next season.