Every grand house once had a walled garden, an enclosed space whose warmth and shelter enabled delicate fruit, vegetables and flowers to flourish where otherwise they might not have survived. Here are four local gardens to visit this autumn, each with a glorious walled plot to enjoy.
KIPLIN HALL GARDENS
Kiplin Hall was built in 1620, and its gardens and pleasure grounds have been delighting visitors ever since. At their heart is the Walled Garden, a spacious 18th century haven that once provided the Hall’s residents with cut flowers, fruit and vegetables.
In later years it fell out of use and was laid down entirely to grass. Fortunately in 2010 a comprehensive restoration programme was begun. All manner of fruit trees, soft fruit bushes, vegetables and flowers were planted, and now the Walled Garden once again provides beautiful floral displays for the Hall, along with many of the ingredients used in Kiplin’s award-winning tearoom.
Beyond the confines of the Walled Garden you’ll find plenty more to explore and enjoy, including the stylish White Garden, the peaceful Rose Garden and the entrancing Sensory Garden, where rich fragrances and the gentle rustle of ornamental grasses create a soothing and relaxing ambience. There are also lakeside and woodland walks, picnic places and activities for children, including croquet, quoits, pond-dipping and a play ship.
SWINTON PARK
The four-acre walled garden at Swinton Park – one of the largest in Europe – is planted with over sixty varieties of fruit and vegetables, most of which feature regularly on Swinton’s restaurant and cookery school menus.
Nowadays Swinton’s walled garden is hugely productive, but until the Cunliffe-Lister family bought their ancestral home back in 2000 it was a sadly overgrown space that had been planted with Christmas trees. Rather than try to recreate the garden as it was in its Victorian heyday, Susan Cunliffe-Lister has embraced modern materials and techniques to create a uniquely personal 21st century version.
Instead of insisting on manicured rows and blocks of vegetation, she has let many of the plants self-seed, blurring boundaries and creating profuse masses of colour, scent and texture. It’s a wonderfully rich and lively space, filled with the buzzing of bees all summer long.
Elsewhere on the Swinton Estate you can enjoy a wide range of other outdoor activities, including falconry, fishing, cycling and pony trekking.
THORNTON HALL GARDENS
When Thornton Hall was built, some time around 1550, it had three separate walled gardens laid out with raised borders. In later centuries these were turned into orchards, and by the time the current owners, Mike and Sue Manners, moved in, the erstwhile gardens had become paddocks for sheep and cattle.
But thanks to an enthusiasm for gardening that Mike and Sue describe as “a hobby which got out of hand”, Thornton Hall has been transformed into one of County Durham’s ‘must see’ gardens. Its former pastures are packed with a huge range of colourful plants – including many rare and unusual ones – and scattered with a variety of quirky items of statuary. Thornton Hall now hosts extensive collections of roses, clematis, peonies, hostas and heucheras. There is also a fine ornamental pond, complete with stream and waterfall, and a vegetable garden. You can find Thornton Hall two miles northwest of Darlington on the road to Staindrop. The gardens are only open on a handful of days during the year, so plan your visit well in advance.
SCAMPSTON WALLED GARDEN
The walls of what was once Scampston Hall’s kitchen garden date from the 18th century, but what lies within them is decidedly and unapologetically modern. Designed by the renowned Dutch plantsman Piet Oudolf in 1999 and opened to the public in 2005, it’s a strikingly imaginative response to a traditional space.
Each section of the garden has been given its own identity using bold, repeated geometrical forms such as cubes of clipped box, pillars of yew or blocks of ornamental grasses. The high point of the garden – literally – is The Mount, a towering pyramid from the top of which you can take in the whole design from an aerial perspective. Scampston Hall is set in magnificent parkland designed by ‘Capability’ Brown, and visitors can follow waymarked trails through the 80-acre estate. Families are welcome and there is a variety of seasonal activities for children on offer; for full details check the ‘events’ section of the Scampston Hall website.