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The Cork Lawn
Named after its centre-piece; a gnarled old specimen of the cork oak, the Cork Lawn also boasts the Root House - a rare form of English garden architecture, - and a swamp cypress, whose peculiar contorted roots emerging from the water have earned it the name of ‘the knobbly knee tree’.
The Long Walk
Cross the wrought iron footbridge to the Long Walk which stretches up to the house. In spring, it is a beautiful mass of crocus and primrose, and in summer the Turk’s cap lily takes over. Trees include acer, cornus, sorbus, medlar and the weeping silver lime. A marble statue of Apollo stands behind the tall yew hedge to the right.
The Garden Pool and New Lawn
The lovely Garden Pool, its banks smothered in daffodils in Spring, leads to the New Lawn, created by John Berkeley’s father in the 1950’s. Sorbus and malus predominate, but here too you will find fine examples of prunus, willow, the striking scarlet oak, and the deciduous Metasequoia glyptostroboides – a relic of the vegetation of the past, previously known only from fossil remains in central China.
The Copse
Bright with rhododendrons, azaleas, meconopses and primulas in the first part of the year, autumn colour in the copse is provided by striking acer cultivars, with the delicious scent of Mahonia ‘Charity’ and ‘Buckland’ for winter interest. Tall pines serve as natural windbreak on the east.
The East Border
Fragranced by lilacs in May, and by roses in summer, the East border has the strange Laburnocytisus adamii – a graft hybrid with some branches bearing the yellow flowers of laburnum and others bearing the purple flowers of broom. The beautiful Sophora japonica was a gift from the National Gardens Scheme to mark its Silver Jubilee.
The North Border
Home to a fine cut-leaved walnut, a collection of variegated shrubs, and a Chusan palm, which gives a Mediterranean air to the garden.
The Kitchen Garden
The Kitchen Garden boasts many talking points including the rare Dipelta floribunda and Dipelta yunnanensis and at one end of the rockery, Sequoia sempervirens ‘Adpressa’ with its creamy coloured shoots. There are many tender and semi-hardy shrubs, plants and alpines.
The Millennium Garden
A semi-tropical, part-Italianate garden created by John Berkeley and respected plantswoman Veronica Addams, and set within the Kitchen Garden. It is deliberately planted for late summer colour and has two arched walkways laden with the striking Cercis Canadensis Forest Pansy and Robinia hispida Macrophylla. Many tender species thrive here including the seldom seen Melianthus major, and it has a fountain, a sunken garden and a rill
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