Buffet breakfasts every day and dinner each evening are included in the Garden tour of England cost.
We proceed at a relaxed holiday pace and you are welcome to take a day off whenever we are scheduled to return to the same hotel in the evening.
Our appointed travel agent for your country will be pleased to make travel arrangements for you to connect with our tours. If available we can book you extra nights at tour hotels.
Garden tour in England's Wessex, then Hampton Court Palace Flower Show (8 days)
Sensuous gardens at the peak of the gardening year, with herbaceous borders in the fullness of summer and fragrant roses besporting themselves seductively over pergolas and balustrades, plus the Hampton Court Palace Flower Show.
Saturday July 5
We gather at Pratt's Hotel in Bath for four nights. Make your own way to the hotel or we arrange your early morning transfer from London Heathrow airport, with a stop for lunch at West Green House. Explore the old city of Bath. This evening join your tour director and the rest of the group 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 former home of 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 the gardens of Hestercombe, containing one of the great gardens of 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 privately owned, 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 Bolehyde Manor, a characterful manor house dating from the fifteenth century with outbuildings and gatehouses developed into a charming huddle of beautifully weathered Cotswold stone buildings. This is reflected in the series of linked garden rooms disposed around the house. Planted for year round interest, the garden is nevertheless at its stunning best in midsummer. 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 the privately owned Abbey House Gardens beside the historical Benedictine abbey, 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 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.
+++ View map of these tour locations +++ To download brochure, please select your country link at the top of this page.