My love of gardening started when I met Martha Stewart and designed her first Garden book, then helped found and was the first Art Director of the new magazine, Martha Stewart Living, in 1990. For more than 20 years, I had the great privilege of traveling around America, meeting gardeners and seeing and photographing their gardens. I learned so much in those years, which I in turn would apply to my home garden behind our Greenwich Village brownstone, and later, in East Hampton. More recently, my husband, Stephen Doyle, and I had been talking with our friends, Richard Armstrong and Dorsey Waxter, about doing a serious garden trip to England. We are all gardeners, as well as architecture- and design-lovers—Richard had recently retired as the director of The Guggenheim Museum and Dorsey runs the Van Doren Waxter art gallery, while Stephen is a longtime artist and designer—and we decided that we could all get away during April of last year.
Richard spearheaded a lot of the research, and used the agency Oliver’s Travels to organize our stays. But our idea was to pinpoint gardens we wanted to see and then explore other sights around them—grand houses, estates, and museums. With four weeks to travel, we also wanted to make a big sweep, to move around the country. Richard decided we should start in Norfolk, because he really wanted to see Sandringham, where the royal family spends Christmas. Kent was essential, as it is the heart of Bloomsbury country—with the glorious estates of Vanessa Bell at Charleston and Vita Sackville-West at Knole and Sissinghurst. While I’ve been to Charleston and Sissinghurst, I know that those gardens are worth revisiting every year. Of course for any gardener, seeing things at different times of year is everything—it’s how you learn. And that was our intent. We wanted to learn and to be inspired.
From there, we planned to continue to Gloucestershire, home to King Charles’ Highgrove, and Hidcote—an extraordinary Arts & Crafts garden—then finally to the outer reaches of Cornwall, where we would get to see the Barbara Hepworth Sculpture Garden, Tate St. Ives, and Lost Gardens of Heligan.
As we were four in a rental car, we limited ourselves to one bag each, which was a challenge, particularly when we discovered that some of the houses didn’t have a washer-dryer. We were worried about being wet and being cold, so we all brought outerwear and good English boots with a tread, as well as hats and gloves, which I highly recommend. Spring in England can be mercurial!
The driving itself was also challenging. In the countryside, the lanes are often very narrow, and you’re driving on the wrong side of the road, while parking the car in town takes skill. Stephen was the only one brave enough to drive—he wound up driving every single day for 30 days!
But the trip was wonderful, and took us through so many diverse landscapes and histories. There were, of course, surprises along the way, both good (I never expected our rental at Stancombe Park to have a hidden garden from the early 19th century), and less so (some towns in Norfolk felt positively bleak). I might have booked one more hotel stay (at, say, The Pig in West Sussex), rather than so many cottage rentals, as it did get a bit tiring having to shop and cook at night after a full day of garden touring. And even though we were off-season in April, we found that reservations were essential. But we’d do it all again pretty much the same way. Only next time, I’d want to see it all in a different season!
WEEK 1—NORFOLK: Sandringham, Holkham Hall, Cambridge, Sainsbury, Blickling Estate, Cley next the Sea
Norfolk is a low-lying county on England’s east coast, a farming region dotted with salt marshes and small market towns. It was roughly a 2.5 hour-drive from London to get here.
Through Oliver’s Travels, we rented a small two-BR barn-turned-cottage (called “Little Barn”—no longer on their site) on a larger estate surrounded by sheep grazing, blooming fragrant viburnums and yellow primulas lining the woods along the drive. The country setting and modern renovation of the cottage were a great combination. Rapeseed (which makes cooking oil) was in bloom all over Norfolk, so we drove past endless fields of brilliant acid yellow. This neon-yellow hue will be how I remember this area. Because our house was on a dirt road far from town, we went out for lunch every day and had dinner at home.
Sandringham is where the Royal family traditionally spends Christmas. The house felt very traditional and provincial, with so much porcelain on every surface that all I could think is, who is dusting all this? The house felt very uninspired though the property was lovely, and despite the rain, we walked the narrow path through the extraordinary camellia garden, with hundreds of camellias on both sides of the path. The bushes were enormous—arching way above our heads into the surrounding trees, in every color and style: waxy perfect blossoms in pinks, whites, cream, reds, oranges, striped, double and singles. Huge drifts of daffodils meandered around the trees and newly planted varieties of magnolias were also in bloom. It was very fun to see the Mary Magdalene Church, where the royal family goes for Christmas service. It is very small, but every surface is decorated, alongside an opulent silver and gold carved altarpiece and painted ceiling. We had lunch at the café on the property, which was not particularly good.
Holkham Hall in Wells-Next-the Sea was built by Thomas Coke, the Earl of Leicester. Orphaned at age 10, at 15 he went on a Grand Tour of Europe, where he met the architect, William Kent. Kent taught him how to look at architecture, and Coke bought paintings, sculpture, furniture and tapestries. When he returned to England, he designed his Neo-Palladian house with Kent, but died before it was completed in 1764. This is one of the most intact houses we saw on our trip, from the marble hall entry with its elaborately coffered ceiling and grand stairs surrounded by pink alabaster columns and marble statues. Every room is decorated with ancestral portraits and grand furniture that Coke brought back from his travels. Fortunately, subsequent heirs did not have enough money to alter the original design, so it is very much like it was in 1764.
Start by watching the film that is shown in the stables. The estate is 25,000 acres today, and the current Earl of Leicester of Holkham is dedicated to sustainability, with a focus on farming crops and raising sheep and cows. They have invested in solar energy and anaerobic digestion and turned acreage back to salt marsh where the land borders the North Sea. This attracts wildlife and enhances biodiversity/ecosystems, while allowing the area to flood, protecting the farm itself. The Earl narrates the film, which lovers of Downton Abbey will enjoy, because he looks just like Hugh Bonneville.
The walled kitchen garden is 6 acres and glorious, with its espaliered fig and apple trees, orchard and vineyard. We had one of the best lunches of the trip at Victoria Hotel and Restaurant in Holkham, essentially on the estate property. (Make a reservation.) The exterior façade of the hotel is made of large pebbles neatly lined up row after row and trimmed in blond brick—absolutely beautiful. The food is from local farms and the restaurant is lovely. After a delicious lunch, we drove up to the beach where various films have been made, and saw how the land reclamation has made the area a nature habitat and a romantic spot on the North Sea.
The town of Cambridge is bustling with students and parents, with lots of lovely shops along narrow streets. We visited friends of friends who were professors at Trinity College, so we were able to walk around the campus. The Wren Library, designed by Christopher Wren from 1676-1695, was the highlight. The light in the library is amazing, and the black-and-white tile floor leads your eye to the full-size marble statue of Lord Byron at one end. Flanking each library stack are incredibly intricate limewood carvings of fruits, flowers, horses and bits of armor by Grinling Gibbons; the fragility and detail of the carving took our breath away. We were fortunate to be able to see one of the library’s prize possessions, The Canterbury Psalter, a book of psalms in three languages from 1150, lettered and illustrated by the same monk whose self-portrait—leaning over his book—is on the last page. We also visited the Fitzwilliam Museum, a Cambridge University museum with collections ranging from ancient to modern-day, which was excellent, with a very nice restaurant.
We tried to see Kettles Yard, the University’s modern-art gallery that we knew had some very good Bloomsbury artist paintings, but it was closed for renovation. If it is open when you travel, you should definitely try to see it.
We stopped at the Sainsbury Centre Art Museum at the University of East Anglia, whose amazing collection mixes global ancient art and artifacts with modern art. The gallery building, designed by Norman Foster, is one huge room where you can experience the juxtaposition of global cultures and modern work—for example, paintings by Francis Bacon across from a Tang Dynasty sculpture, and Amedeo Modigliani stone head next to an African carving. There is also an outdoor sculpture park.
The town of Norwich is quaint and bustling. We went on a market day and were rewarded with great fruits, vegetables, meats, seafood and prepared foods to cook back at our rental. There was also great shopping in the town (my friend bought handmade shoes at Bowhill & Elliott, which she had shipped to NYC). We lunched at Ivy, which is a high-end chain with very good food and great decoration. The restaurant walls are lined with posters from the 1930s and ‘40s, with every inch of wall space covered so it is elegant and stylish. As we toured around England, if the town had an Ivy restaurant, we were glad to be able to lunch there.
Sainsbury Cathedral, Cathedral Church of the Blessed Virgin Mary, is a gothic lacy structure built in 1258. The tower and spire were built in 1330, the tallest spire in England. The stained-glass windows are very beautiful, and we enjoyed walking around the cloister.
The Blickling Estate is reputedly built on the ruins of Anne Boleyn’s home, and the first thing you see when you walk into the Jacobean Hall is a portrait of Henry VIII. The mansion was built by Sir Henry Hobart, who purchased the estate in 1616. This is one of the most interesting houses in terms of decoration. As you enter the front hall, the dark wood carved double staircase surrounded by ancestor portraits is astonishing. The tapestries and hand-painted wallpapers and ornate plaster ceilings are well described in each room. Don’t miss the Chinese bedroom with the hand painted walls and armoire. You will be visually overstimulated in the Library or Long Gallery, with thousands of books in dark wood and leaded-glass cases, a nature-inspired ornate plaster ceiling, and hand-painted border that looks like a King Arthur legend through the lens of William Morris, and lots of tapestries. The kitchen is a treat, with big sunny windows. The garden is very formal, with topiary and perfectly trimmed yew hedges that rise up to an 18th century temple. The woodland garden was filled with blooming daffodils, magnolias, and swaths of hellebores when we were there. The walled kitchen garden was restored in 2014 and not at its height in April, but the espaliered apple and pear trees were in bloom and the benches sitting against the walls a great place to take the sun. We had a nice lunch next door at the Buckinghamshire Arms.
Cley next the Sea in northeast Norfolk has not been next to the sea since the 17th century due to land reclamation, but originally it was one of the busiest ports in England and the Flemish gables in the town architecture are a reminder of that time. Today, the architecture and perfectly manicured small gardens make the walk through the very small town at the edge of wild marshland a great break from historic houses. The facades of the houses are made of cobbles and brick—the incredibly bright light from the sea and the austerity of the design is enchanting. When the ports silted up, the town turned to tourism. We had lunch at the Wiveton Bell near Blakeney, a lovely setting with a few bedrooms. We enjoyed a very nice fish menu in an airy, comfortable room. I would definitely recommend it.
WEEK 2—KENT: Charleston, Bateman’s, Chartwell, Knoll, Great Dixter, Sissinghurst
Kent, often referred to as the “Garden of England,” was the richest part of the trip. We drove about four hours from Norfolk, which we broke up with lunch, through a landscape of rolling green countryside and small historic towns. This area puts you in a very Bloomsbury mode. I highly recommend reading Virginia Woolf’s Orlando during this leg! Also worth adding if you become obsessed: Virginia Woolf by Alexandra Harris (available in the bookstore at Sissinghurst); Juliette Nicholson: A House Full of Daughters, A Memoir of Seven Generations; Sissinghurst, Vita Sackville-West and the Creation of a Garden, by Vita Sackville-West and Sara Raven; The Bloomsbury Group, by Frances Spalding; and The Edwardians, by Vita Sackville-West.
We rented a large suburban house in Hawkhurst, Kent, with room enough to invite friends who live in Sussex. The house was very close to town with an excellent Waitrose for food shopping.
Charleston Farmhouse (Firle, East Sussex) was the home of artists Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant. Vanessa’s sister, Virginia Woolf, lived nearby. Vanessa and Duncan were members of the Omega Workshop, founded by Roger Fry in 1913; it produced artist-designed furniture, fabrics and ceramics; many of their designs are used in the house for curtains, upholstery, rugs and decorative tiles. Vanessa and Duncan moved to Charleston in 1916 before WWI, while Vanessa’s husband, Clive, an art critic, stayed in London until war broke out. The architecture of the farmhouse is simple and square, with small rooms and a riot of color and decoration on the walls, doors and furniture painted by Vanessa and Duncan, in what has famously become the Bloomsbury style. I have visited this house three times, and every time I am completely enchanted with it. This time, we were finally allowed to take pictures and tour ourselves, although there are docents to tell you the stories of each room and a terrific Bloomberg App that gives you information about every painting.
Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant were wonderful painters and very influenced by the impressionists, but in a modernist style. There are many engaging and delicious portraits of the Bloomsbury society on the walls, so you get a keen sense of the people who inhabited the house, raised their children, had many affairs, tended a wonderful garden, wrote books, and led a creative life—the interiors are a riot of color, texture, and amusement.
Bloomsbury society visited and often stayed at Charleston, including Virginia and Leonard Woolf, and Lytton Strachey, who is depicted in the garden in one of Duncan Grant’s paintings. John Maynard Keynes wrote most of his famous book, the Economic Consequences of Peace (1919), in one of the bedrooms. Keynes was Duncan Grant’s lover, until he married a Russian dancer for the Ballet Russe and took a house in nearby Tilton. Vanessa and Clive had two children who were raised at Charleston. Vanessa and Duncan had an affair, and a child that Clive raised as his own.
The small garden is right outside Vanessa Bell’s bedroom at the back of the house, surrounded by high stone walls. Even in April, the euphorbia, primrose, forget-me-nots, tulips, daffodils, iris, silla, epimedium, and lunaria were in bloom, and it was easy to identify the peonies and roses that were coming along. The kitchen garden was planted and the willow trellis in place for the peas. As a gardener, seeing the plan and structure of the garden in early spring was instructive.
Charleston has a very nice café in the barn across the street from the house (where they also have events), and the shop is wonderful—selling fabric designed by Duncan Grant and Vanessa Bell (which I bought for sofa cushions).
Bateman’s, the home of Rudyard Kipling in Burnwash, East Sussex, is a 1634 Jacobean house surrounded by perennial borders, an orchard and woodland. Kipling wrote Jungle Book in Vermont and bought Bateman’s in 1902, when he returned home. The house offered privacy for him and his wife, Caroline, and two surviving children. Kipling’s study, his great oak desk surrounded by his library, was the heart of the home and still contains Kipling’s spirit. Kipling’s father was a potter and sculptor, who created plaster reliefs of the scenes in Jungle Book that were later used as designs for the illustrations; these are shown side by side with various editions of Jungle Book through the years. The dining room is set for dinner and the leather gilded and painted “wallpaper” is spectacular.
Kipling used the money from his Nobel Prize in 1907 to build a square pond in the garden; from there, you can take the woodland walk that leads to the river Dudwell and the old mill that Kipling used to create electricity for the house. There was a blanket of wild garlic in bloom under the trees, and we had lunch at the café overlooking the gardens and rolling lawn.
Chartwell was the country house and family home of Winston Churchill near Westerham, Kent, from 1922 until his death in 1965. The origins of the estate date to the 14th century, but by the time Churchill and his wife Clementine purchased the house, it had been enlarged several times. Churchill hired architect Philip Tilden to modernize the house, but it is the views over the garden to the Wealds of Kent that Churchill felt was “the most beautiful and charming” and was the reason he bought the estate. The rooms of the house are comfortable and conventional, but it is Churchill’s paintings on walls in all the rooms that make a visit so worthwhile.
He started painting when he was in his 40s, noting, “The muse of painting came to my rescue.” Painting rested his mind from the pressures of government and became a lifelong passion. He painted still lives, portraits, landscapes and cityscapes. His paints and easel accompanied him around the world, and became a diary of the people and places he experienced. The most fascinating part of the house is Churchill’s studio in a brick building down the hill from the house and next to the walled garden, where he built the brick walls himself, which he signaled with an engraving that says, THE GREATER PART OF THIS WALL WAS BUILT BETWEEN THE YEARS 1925 & 1932 BY WINSTON WITH HIS OWN HANDS.
The Studio is lined with paintings and you can easily see the range of his work, the places he visited Africa, Europe, the Middle East and North America, and the people who were important to him. There is an amazing painting of a bombed church from the WWII Blitz in London. Churchill’s easel, palette and a repurposed cigar humidor (from Havana) with his tubes of paint stand at the ready in the studio.
The vegetable gardens, the perennial borders, the camellias and espaliered fruit trees and very grand trees on the property are wonderful to see—but my heart was lost to the painting studio and the humanity of the man.
There are at least two stories of Knole House. The most fascinating is its connection to Vita Sackville-West, who grew up in the house, but could not inherit because she was a woman. When Vita met Virginia Woolf in 1922, Woolf spent considerable time at Knole, and the two women became lovers. Over the winter of 1927-28, Woolf wrote Orlando, drawing on the history of Knole and the Sackville-West ancestors. The house passed to one of her uncles, then Vita married Harold Nicolson, and they eventually bought Sissinghurst. Juliet Nicolson, granddaughter of Vita and Harold, writes about the myths and legends of the family in her worthwhile book, A House Full of Daughters, A Memoir of Seven Generations.
The house dates to the mid 15th century and is one of the largest country houses in England, with 400 rooms and seven acres of roofs. Henry VIII went there to shoot deer and his daughter, Mary, stayed at Knole during her mother Catherine of Aragon’s protracted divorce from Henry in 1532-33. One can envision Mark Rylance as Thomas Cromwell in Wolf Hall, with the forbidding decoration, heavy dark furniture, tapestries, long paneled hallways with paintings of noble lords and ladies, and suffocating dark bedrooms hung with gold silks and embroideries. Queen Elizabeth is thought to have granted the estate to her cousin, Thomas Sackville, in 1603, and apparently the house has not changed much since his time. Knole doesn’t have a garden to speak of—it’s all about the 1,000 acres of parkland and majestic trees; it’s open to the community and families take advantage of the wide lawns and walking paths.
Great Dixter in East Sussex was purchased by Nathaniel and Daisy Lloyd in 1909, but it is his son Christopher, youngest of the 6 children, who made Great Dixter a famous garden. Nathaniel hired the architect Edward Lutyens to restore and enlarge the 15th century house, then called simply Dixter. As you approach the timbered house, the vertical stripes are a perfect contrast to the gardens and trees surrounding it. Lutyens stripped the interior of the house of its 19th century additions, opening up the medieval hall to its original country grandeur. The house is actually 3 houses: Lutyens and Lloyd both appreciated authenticity, so they drove around the countryside and found a broken-down 15th century house that was about to be demolished and bought it for 75 pounds, numbering the timbers so that it could become an extension of the original house. The third section is designed by Lloyd and completed in 1912, at which point the house was renamed Great Dixter.
Nathaniel worked with Lutyens on the structure of the garden and Daisy devised the planting. The topiary garden, or Peacock Garden, is close to the front of the house, and is a joy to stroll with its carved yew birds, like characters in a play. Ahead of her time, Daisy planted the wild garden in the meadow when her son, Christopher, was a child, and today the diversity in the meadows provides a natural habitat for animals and insects. Christopher went on to get his degree in ornamental horticulture after serving in East Africa in WWII, and eventually returned to Great Dixter and wrote articles and books on gardening in order to support himself and the garden.
You enter the Sunk Garden through a carved yew hedge that looks like a cartoon of a castle wall and enter an intimate space, the beautiful stone benches covered in plants growing from crevices, the pots so beautifully designed and integrated, the sheer scale of the tree peonies, an enormous fig tree, the vibrancy of the super-green euphorbias against the purple and red species tulips. Then go down a few steps and a terrace made of small stones in the shape of a dog is surrounded by an array of potted tropicals—a garden with a sense of humor! Fergus Garrett joined Great Dixter as head gardener in 1992 and is now the CEO of the Great Dixter Charitable Trust that Christopher set up in 2003. There is a nursery and a café on the property—you can spend the whole day here quite happily.
Lucky us—our traveling companions introduced us to Juliet Nicolson, Harold Nicolson and Vita Sackville West’s granddaughter, at the gates of Sissinghurst at 9:30, before the garden opened at 10:00. We climbed the tower to see Vita’s private study, not normally open to the public. What a privilege to be able to stand in the study—shoes off—where Vita wrote her poetry, novels and garden articles. A huge tapestry of a garden hangs behind Vita’s desk, where three framed photographs sit: her lover, Virginia Woolf; her husband, Harold; and a B/W photo of the lost painting of the Brontë sisters that is now in the National Portrait Gallery. Juliet said that the room was exactly as Vita left it. We walked up to the roof of the tower, and the views of the surrounding garden, laid out in “rooms” separated by brick and stone walls and perfectly shaped yew hedges.
Sissinghurst was very much a collaborative effort, starting in 1930 when Harold and Vita came in the rain to see what was then a ruin—the wreckage of the 16th century great Elizabethan house that Queen Elizabeth I had visited in 1573. After 300 years of neglect, it took Vita and Harold three years to clear the debris. The tower and the gate house and two small brick houses were all that was left of a vast estate. The south cottage had Vita and Harold’s bedrooms and a small kitchen. Juliet Nicholson grew up at Sissinghurst in one of the small private houses and wrote A House Full of Daughters, which is well worth reading for the account of the affairs and family intrigue (according to Juliet, Vita had 50 lovers including Virginia Woolf) as much as the history of Knole, Sissinghurst and Charleston.
Entering Sissinghurst through the gatehouse, the Elizabethan tower is framed by grassy spaces and old walls now covered in climbing roses, clematis, and magnolias. Along the gatehouse wall, stone sinks rest on brick legs, filled with delicate fritillaria and miniature daffodils. A small gateway leads to the rose garden, where irises, peonies, and figs spill over hazel trellises. Vita’s motto to “cram, cram, cram” shows in every overflowing border, and in June, the air is thick with the scent of blooming roses.
Beyond the rose garden lies the Lime Walk, designed by Harold, a procession-like path flanked by pleached lime trees and vibrant spring bulbs. This leads to the Nuttery, a shady woodland garden beneath rows of nut trees, where a stone boy presides among ferns and white trilliums. The final stop is the White Garden—Vita and Harold’s last creation together—bordered by neat hedges and filled with white tulips in spring, lilies in summer, and an iron trellis of climbing white roses that forms a room of petals outside Vita’s final window. There’s a large café and bookstore near the ticket booth that’s very pleasant.
We had lunch at Waterlane Walled Garden, near Hawkhurst, a series of Victorian greenhouses turned restaurant, surrounded by vegetable gardens. I cannot imagine a more beautiful setting for lunch, and everything on the superb menu is from local farms. Crystal sea monkfish carpaccio, Gloucestershire old spot pork pie, wye valley asparagus, polytunnel rocket pesto risotto with oyster mushrooms…I could go on; it was one of the most memorable meals we had in England—and then there was the rhubarb galette with cream to finish. The atmosphere of the elegant 19th century greenhouses, the impeccable service, the views of growing vegetables, make me smile just thinking of them.
WEEK 3—Gloucestershire: Highgrove, Painswick, Miserden, Hidcote, Hauser & Wirth, Stourhead
We drove another three-and-a-half to four hours west to southwest England and the Cotswolds, known for its lush valleys and ancient woodlands. We were lured by the chance to see Hidcote, a masterpiece of Arts and Crafts garden design, and one of England’s oldest gardens, which inspired Vita Sackville-West.
We rented our Cotswolds house at Stancombe Park. The small square stone house is right out of The Holiday by Nancy Meyers, except it was spring and we were surrounded by brilliant green fields, sheep grazing, and walking paths through a small forest overflowing with wild garlic and blue scilla. Stancombe is owned by the two Llewellyn brothers, Edge and Harry, who are renovating and restoring the houses and barns on the property for rent. Their grandparents bought the main house in the 1960s; it sits on the hillside overlooking a lake surrounded by grazing sheep. The original mansion burned down in the 1800s and the current house is the only wing left standing. We took a walk through the woods to find the hidden garden, designed by the original owner, Purnell Bransby Cooper (1791-1866). There is a Regency Doric Temple (that you can rent for the night; it sleeps two) overlooking a large pond surrounded by pleasure park with paths leading to stone tunnels, Japanese follies, statues, a camellia grove, a swan fountain, and shell grottos. It is a wonderful fantasy. There are also walks around the hillsides with spectacular views in all directions. Harry and Edge Llewellyn are creating tours of local gardens as part of their endeavors.
Highgrove Garden, their Majesties King Charles III and Queen Camilla’s Garden, is excessively private—you cannot take pictures or take notes on your phone, and you are watched like a hawk by your private tour guide. Our guide did not know the names of any plants but did tell us, relentlessly, how artistic the King is. There are a few parts of the garden that are lovely (the stumpery is quite fun to see), but the garden that stands out is the “me garden,” with the 50 or so busts of King Charles on pedestals surrounding the garden. Apparently, people send the King so many sculptures of himself that he decided to use them to watch over his planting scheme. The gardens are managed organically, and the restaurant and stores are very large, so there are lots of opportunities to donate to the King’s foundation.
The Painswick Rococo Garden was originally designed as a pleasure garden in the 1740s, but it was abandoned to woodland in the 1950s and restored in the 1980s by Lord and Lady Dickinson. The kitchen garden is one of the nicest we saw, with simple wood posts and chicken wire framing, but apples and roses are espaliered all along the outside creating a wonderful blooming fence. Take the paths through the trees and find the follies and a great maze in the shape of the number 250 to celebrate the garden’s anniversary. The café is under a tent and serves soup and sandwiches from a charming converted shipping container kitchen. The nursery is excellent.
The town of Painswick is worth visiting, particularly Saint Mary’s churchyard, with its carved lollipop-shaped yew trees that looks like a Dr. Seuss forest—part topiary, part enchanted graveyard. There are 99 yew trees dating to the 18th century and the small church is lovely to step into for a look.
From 1326 the estate of Miserden belonged to the Crown, and it formed a part of the dowry of Catherine Parr when she married King Henry VIII. Today, the many gabled gothic house forms a backdrop to the garden, but it is closed to the public. The garden was probably laid out in 1620, but in the 20th century Sir Edwin Lutyens had a hand in updating the garden, particularly the grass stairs near the house. The geometrically carved yew hedges are backdrops to the long herbaceous borders. The terraces near the house with pleached lime trees, stone benches covered in Kenilworth Ivy, stone stairs and pots of flowers, are really elegant. The gigantic, ancient sycamore tree that has grown into the stone wall and swallowed it up is quite fantastic.
Looking back, Hidcote is the garden that has most stayed with me, because I found it inspiring for my own garden. It is an Arts and Crafts garden designed by Major Lawrence Johnston, an American who settled in England in 1900. He became a British citizen and fought in the Boer War and WWI. Lawrence’s mother, Gertrude Winthrop, bought the estate in 1907, and Lawrence immediately started to lay out the garden. It was largely completed by 1922, when Johnston hired Frank Adams, who had been head gardener at Winsor Castle. Johnson, who was a member of the Royal Horticultural Society, was a plant explorer and collected specimens in Africa and China; he introduced over 70 plants into cultivation not just for Hidcote, but for the royal botanic gardens at Edinburg and Kew. His plants such as Hypericum ‘Hidcote,’ Lavendula ‘Hidcote,’ and Verbena ‘Lawrence Johnston’ can be found in gardens across England.
Hidcote’s 10-and-a-half acres follow the Arts and Crafts garden ideal: a series of intimate, formal spaces near the house that gradually give way to looser, more naturalistic plantings along the borders of surrounding farmland. Influenced by Thomas H. Mawson’s The Art & Craft of Garden Making, Johnston embraced the idea of gardens as a sequence of rooms, each one drawing you deeper into discovery. The garden was visited by the likes of Vita Sackville-West, Edith Wharton, Sibyl Colefax, and Harold Nicolson.
Near the house, an ancient cedar towers over low yew hedges, which enclose magnolias, maples, roses, and tree peonies. As you move outward, the design unfolds into herbaceous borders, a bathing pool garden, and an alpine terrace, dotted with urns brimming with tulips and narcissus. The stream garden becomes increasingly wild, with mossy rocks, ferns, forget-me-nots, epimedium, and nodding erythronium. At the Stilt Garden, pleached hornbeams frame a wrought-iron gate that opens onto a final, cinematic view of open pasture.
We decided to take a break from house rentals and stayed at The Pig Near Bath for two nights. There are at least 11 Pig hotels in the UK, and they all have glorious kitchen gardens, treatment rooms, cozy fireplace bars and wonderful farm-to-table restaurants. The original pink Cotswold stone house is covered with wisteria and two giant iron pigs greet you at the door. The decorating is quintessential English country, with a modern flair for the unexpected, odd collections, paintings and those indescribable English paint colors (mouse grey, delphinium blue, salmon pink). The food from the kitchen garden, orchards and local farms is excellent, and the dining room looks out onto the landscape. It is lovely to walk around the very large kitchen garden and see the pea trellises, the protective hoops, the terracotta cloches, the espaliered fruit trees, and watch the gardeners in action.
Hauser & Wirth Somerset galleries occupy a former farmstead with stone buildings and clean white galleries for art exhibitions. The impressive farm store has local meats and cheeses. The Dutch landscape designer Piet Oudolf designed the perennial meadow behind the gallery buildings. The meadow weaves in and out with grasses and seed heads and gentle colors all playing against the buff-colored, kidney-bean-shaped Radic Pavilion by Chilean architect Smiljan Radic. Hauser & Wirth also have a gallery in nearby Bruton, where we had an excellent lunch at The Old Pharmacy.
The landscape of Stourhead, laid out in the late 18th century, has enormous craggy ancient trees, and flowering viburnum and rhododendrons in large masses. The path around the man-made lake is meant to be a journey informed by Greek mythology with temples and a Palladian Bridge. Every view looks like a classic English landscape painting by John Constable. The house was dark and not particularly interesting.
WEEK 4—CORNWALL: Tate St. Ives, Barbara Hepworth Museum and Sculpture Garden, Lost Gardens of Heligan, Caerhays Estate
Cornwall, England’s westernmost peninsula, was still another four-hour drive from our previous stop. It’s a wild, rocky place, and we felt like we were teetering on the edge of the Atlantic. It rained every day here, but it was still magical.
We rented a modern house (“Porthtowan Retreat”) in Porthtowan, on granite cliffs overlooking a popular surfing beach and the Atlantic Ocean. Right outside our door, the iconic South West Coast Path winds along the sheer cliff edge through bright acid yellow flowers of rough gorse, and a tapestry of wildflowers in violet, olive, and brown blanket the hillsides up to the brilliant cerulean blue sky and heavy clouds and the endless horizon of the turquoise Atlantic. Wildflowers like corn marigold, catchfly, and field pansy grow next to the cliffs with views of grassy hills and farmland to the west. We walked the path for a few miles every day, rain or shine (mostly rain). The national trail is 630 miles long along the coastline, which makes you feel like you could walk forever.
We came to Cornwall to see the Barbara Hepworth Museum and Sculpture Garden and the Tate Gallery St. Ives. Dame Barbara Hepworth 1903-1975 was a modernist sculptor, very influenced by rocks, cliffs, sea caves, nature and the universe. She lived through two world wars, and took care of her triplets during the privations of WWII as an artist barely making ends meet. She was married to the painter Ben Nicholson, and they moved to St. Ives in 1933.
Hepworth worked in wood, bronze and stone. Her work is characterized by perforations and holes that expressed abstract ideas of space as a way of making negative space a part of her sculpture. She was friends with Henry Moore, who also incorporated holes and perforations into his sculptures. Her house and studio can be found on a small side street, a short walk from Tate St. Ives. Often in an artist’s studio museum the best work is not displayed, but this is not the case—the second-floor studio contains a large group of Hepworth’s smaller pieces, as well as paintings by Ben Nicholson. The garden, on a rise looking out at the ocean, is an intimate setting for the great bronze sculptures displayed on the green lawn, with cherry trees and calla lilies, iris and peonies. There are two sculpture studios in glass houses attached to the house, both with sculptures in progress, tools at the ready, and maquettes on shelves as if she just walked away for a cup of tea. Huge, uncarved marble slabs sit outside on the patio because she had a delivery a few days before she died in a fire. She believed in the human connection to earth and space and lived long enough to witness man walking on the moon.
Tate St. Ives is a branch of the Tate in London, built from 1988-1993 on the site of a former glassworks. It has a magnificent view of Porthmeor Beach surrounded by cliffs. In 1980, the Tate took over the management of the Barbara Hepworth Museum, and then decided to open a museum dedicated to the local artists whose paintings were already in the Tate’s collection. This includes Ben Nicholson, Barbara Hepworth, Vanessa Bell, Patrick Heron and Winifred Nicholson (Ben Nicholson’s first wife before Barbara.)
The Lost Gardens of Heligan are as romantic as they sound; “lost” because the parkland estate was created in the 18th century and fell into ruin in WWI and was rediscovered and restored starting in the 1990s. The Times called it “the garden restoration of the century.” Today, the restored landscape includes colossal rhododendrons and camellias that are hundreds of years old, and the branches are so large and sloping that you can walk underneath them. We learned that the seeds for these rhododendrons were collected in the 19th century by Joseph Hooker, on a plant-collecting trip in Northern India. The rhododendrons towering overhead in full bloom, including deep pinks, mauve blooms and soft creams, were astonishing. The Jungle area of the garden has palm trees, gigantic tree ferns and even a pineapple glen. We walked around for hours, viewing the very productive and large walled vegetable garden and the Victorian greenhouses. There is a café on the property.
Caerhays Estate has an international reputation for camellias and rhododendrons and is home to the National Magnolia Collection, with 90+ species. The storybook castle was designed by John Nash, but was closed the day we visited. The estate borders the South West Coast Path; there are 140 acres of paths to ramble, and in an hour of walking the rocky trails, we had barely scratched the surface. This is not a manicured garden; it’s a forest of blooming trees. There are 100-year-old champion magnolia trees that have received many awards, and enormous azaleas and camellias all on a sloping hillside facing the warm breezes from the English Channel. In fact, the warm breezes mean that the magnolias flower in March and early April, and many of them were finished blooming when we arrived at the end of April, but the enormous camellias and rhododendrons were in bloom.
We drove to London for a few days before returning home, and our first stop was my favorite museum in London, the National Portrait Gallery, where we could continue our Bloomsbury obsession with portraits of and by Vanessa Bell, Duncan Grant, Ben Nicholson, Virginia Woolf and more. After two days in London, we got home in time to see our own garden come into bloom: the tree peonies were just getting started, and I felt like I could relive our trip all over again through my own backyard.
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