The Walled Garden
1.6 ha
Four quarters, box-edged, worked on a five-year rotation. About seventy per cent of what the kitchen uses in summer comes out of here, and the glasshouse takes it into November.
Gardens & Park
Open every day of the year, including the ones nobody comes.
Two hundred and forty hectares of garden and park. Five gardeners, two foresters and a grazier. No bedding out, no annual scheme, and nothing that has to be replanted every spring.
The West Park
210 ha
Wood pasture with 340 veteran oaks, the oldest recorded at around 640 years. Grazed by a small herd that keeps the sward open without touching the trees.
The Lake and Cascade
11 ha
Dug in 1771 and silted almost solid by 1990. Dredged over three winters; the cascade ran again in 2004 for the first time in a lifetime.
The Yew Walk
—
Planted 1690, and the one thing on the estate we will not alter. It is cut once a year, by hand, over five weeks.
The Arboretum
24 ha
Started 1908 and still filling. Two hundred and eleven species, labelled, with the failures left in place and labelled too.
How it is worked
Five gardeners, and none of them in a hurry.
A garden this size cannot be kept to a standard. It can only be kept to a direction, and the direction here has not changed since Margaret Ivey set it in 1961.
No chemical herbicide anywhere on the estate since 2007. No peat since 2011. Compost is made on site from the garden, the stables and the kitchen, and it is the single biggest reason the walled garden still produces what it does at this latitude.
- Gardeners
- 5
- Herbicide-free since
- 2007
- Peat-free since
- 2011
- Compost made
- 310 t/yr