Saturday, July 5:
We gather at Pratt’s Hotel in Bath for five nights. Make your own way to the hotel or we arrange your early morning transfer from London Heathrow airport with a stop (time permitting) for lunch at Australian Marylyn Abbott’s pretty gardens of West Green House. Explore the old city of Bath, then join your tour director and the rest of the group this evening before sitting down together for dinner.
Sunday, July 6:
Today we visit Stourhead, the best known landscape garden in England, started in 1741 by the banker Henry Hoare who dammed the River Stour to make a lake about whose shores he arranged paths, temples, urns, a shivery grotto and a great wealth of trees. In the afternoon we visit Iford Manor, a romantic hillside Italian-style terraced private garden and Elizabethan manor house and former home of renowned Edwardian architect Harold Peto. Flights of steps on the steep wooded slopes of the Frome Valley link terraces with pools, fountains, loggias, colonnades, urns and figures. Columnar cypresses add to the Italian atmosphere and many trees and shrubs flower among the statues.
Monday, July 7:
We stroll around Hestercombe Gardens, one of the great gardens of the collaboration between Sir Edwin Lutyens and Gertrude Jekyll. Shifting levels with lively stonework, a parterre-like ‘Great Plat’, iris-fringed rills fed by water-spouting masks, massed grey-leafed plants, ramparts of rosemary and a pergola of roses and clematis. All set below a restored 18th century romantic landscape garden. We proceed to East Lambrook Manor, the beautifully restored and maintained old garden of author and collector of forgotten cottage plants, Margery Fish (1888-1969).
Tuesday, July 8:
Today we visit two lovely gardens; first The Old Vicarage, Edington - A two-and-a-half acre private garden set high on the side of Salisbury Plain. Swags of clematis, cistus and mahonias enliven the plain facade of the house; a lawn leads to a wild flower meadow with rare varieties of chestnut, sorbus and maple framing stunning views. A dense yew hedge, an allee of hornbeams and brick walls create rooms and shelter exotic plants and trees. There is a hot garden, a romantically planted sunken garden around a well and a gravel bed is a sea of agapanthus and eryngium. Everywhere seedlings push through the gravel. We continue to Courts, a distinguished 18th-century house surrounded by lawns, topiary and hedging laid out originally in the 1920s, and now expanded into new and creative plantings.
Wednesday, July 9:
We start our day at Abbey House Gardens, beside the historical Benedictine abbey and final resting place of the first King of All England. In this lovely garden, summer brings the scent and sensation of over 2000 different roses. Then we go to Rodmarton Manor. Around this Arts & Crafts house, garden rooms are formed by hedges of yew, beech, holly and box, with magnificent herbaceous borders. A traditional kitchen garden features old apple arches.
Thursday, July 10:
Today we go Wisley Garden, the famous home of the Royal Horticultural Society. It is full of ideas and information. There is always part of the garden at its best. The shop offers as large a collection of books on gardening as anywhere in the world. We go on for our remaining two nights at the Mitre Hotel beside the River Thames and opposite Hampton Court Palace.
Friday, July 11:
We go to Hampton Court Palace Flower Show, the Royal Horticultural Society’s greatest annual flower show in the world, in a magnificent historical setting. The Tudor Palace was built in the early 16th century by Thomas Wolsey. In the 17th century Sir Christopher Wren added extensions and was involved in the design of a new garden of which part survives. The original 17th-century Privy Garden has been beautifully restored.
Saturday, July 12:
We say goodbye at Hampton Court with direct rail service to London Waterloo and a taxi or direct bus ride to Heathrow airport. Make your own way at a time that suits your own travel. We can advise on departure planning.
Notes:
Airfare is not included in the tour price.
Price per person shown is for residents of the USA.
Also see tour packages in:
Europe
England
Garden Tours
Senior Tours
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