Garden themes

Sculpture gardens

Some people prefer sculptures and statues to flowers, and there are a number of great places to visit, including Barbara Hepworth’s sculpture garden in St Ives, Cornwall, Hannah Peschar’s Sculpture Garden in Surrey, and the Yorkshire Sculpture Park; while Anglesey Abbey Gardens in Cambridge has “statuary of exceptional quality”

Find out more about Barbara Hepworth's sculpture garden 
Find out more about Hannah Peschar 
Find out more about Yorkshire Sculpture Park

Modern designs

Increasingly garden owners and restorers are looking to modern designers to work for them, notable examples being Scampston Hall in Yorkshire, and Trentham in Staffordshire, both employing the skills of Dutchman Piet Oudolf.

Find out more about Scampston Hall 
Find out more about Trentham Gardens 

Gresgarth Hall in Lancashire is the home of renowned Chelsea award winning designer Arabella Lennox-Boyd, is two-starred and is continually evolving...

Find out more about Gregarth Hall

Film locations

It’s an old but a classic film – Peter Greenaway’s The Draughtsman’s Contract was filmed in the gardens at Groombridge, Kent, which also featured as the home of the Bennets in the recent Pride and Prejudice film.  Pride and Prejudice also featured of course a view of the gardens of Chatsworth, but also Stourhead landscaped gardens in Wiltshire – which was used for the first proposal scene, in the pouring rain...

Find out more about Groombridge 
Find out more about the National Trust properties

Literary locations

Agatha Christie’s gardens at Greenway, near Dartmouth, can be reached by ferry or bicycle – but you are discouraged from visiting by car. A new ferry is planned to take visitors straight from Torquay to Greenway.

Find out more about Greenway

Rudyard Kipling, famous for writing The Jungle Book, lived at Batemans, in  Sussex; while Charleston near Lewes, created by the artists of the Bloomsbury Group, was also visited by many writers.

The University of Oxford Botanic Garden, besides being a two-starred garden, and the oldest botanic garden in Britain, also has a very famous bench – which featured at a crucial moment in Phillip Pullman’s “His Dark Materials” books...

Find out more about Batemans 
Find out more about University of Oxford Botanic Garden