Great Gardens of the Lake District – 2024

It’s quite a drive to the Lake District, so we will travel directly to the area with regular breaks along the way to stretch our legs and keep ourselves fresh.
We aim to arrive at the hotel in the late afternoon where we will base ourselves for our stay: The Swan at Newby Bridge, so we’ll have time to rest before dinner.

After breakfast we venture out to the first of our venues, the lovely Holehird Gardens.
This 10-acre fellside garden is managed by the Lakeland Horticultural Society and run entirely by volunteers.
Enjoy stunning views over Lake Windermere and the Lakeland fells, as well as the Walled Garden with its herbaceous borders and island beds, spring bulbs and collections of rhododendrons, hydrangeas, alpines and no less than six National Plant Collections!
Moving on from here we visit Sizergh Castle, where the garden is complex and varied. The garden areas are interlinked and together tell the story of a family garden which has developed over 800 years. Explore the rock garden, stumpery and orchard: home to four National Collections of hardy ferns; plus the Dutch garden, kitchen garden and herbaceous border.
The medieval manor itself is filled with items collected by 26 generations of the Strickland family, including the internationally recognised Inlaid Chamber.

Muncaster Castle has 77 acres of tranquil historic gardens with a blend of cultivated areas, lawns and woodlands. Although wonderful to explore at any time of year, the month of May is the peak of the flowering season.
This wild, woodland garden will surprise and delight with banks of colour cascading down the hillsides and ravines surrounding the castle.
The historic haunted castle, still a lived-in family home, is the jewel in the majestic setting of the Western Lake District, built on to, extended and refurbished with almost every era in history. The most recent of these projects, and the castle as we see it today, was commissioned by the fourth Lord Muncaster in 1885 and executed by the famous architect, Anthony Salvin.
Holker Hall is the home of Lucy Cavendish and her husband Tor McLaren. Magnificently situated only a short distance from Grange-over-Sands and the expanse of Morecambe Bay, the estate is set in exceptionally beautiful countryside with gardens that merge into parkland, framed by the Lakeland Hills.
The 23 acres of immaculately kept gardens comprise a series of formal gardens set within a more informal landscape of interesting trees, shrubs and meadows. Spring is a riot of colour with displays of tulips, daffodils, wallflowers and spring meadows, framed by majestic rhododendrons and magnolias.
There will also be opportunity to visit the Hall, home of the Cavendish Family, which has never been bought or sold but passed by inheritance through just three families: the Prestons, the Lowthers and the Cavendishes.

Today we venture a little further to the north of the National Park, to Penrith, where we start by visiting Hutton-in-the-Forest.
This house is surrounded by spectacular gardens and grounds which were laid out in the 17th Century. The gardens comprise a beautiful walled garden with herbaceous plants, annuals and roses, apples and pears; terraces and topiary; ponds and a woodland walk.
Inside the house you will see a medieval Stone Hall, high Victorian Drawing Room and other rooms representing a succession of historical eras and styles. There is fine period furniture sitting alongside contemporary ceramics, interesting collections of portraits, good examples of needlework and tapestries (some more than 500 years old) and fierce decorative weaponry!
Dalemain is probably most famous as being the centre for the World Marmalade Awards, some of which are available to buy! But that’s not the main focus of our visit!
We will have time to see the award winning, plantsman’s garden full of magic and imagination including a rose garden, Elizabethan knot garden, herbaceous terrace and wild garden, drawn from the inspiration of William Robinson (Gravetye).
The house has a nationally important collection of furniture, fine art, ceramics and everyday objects of the past including wood carvings by Grinling Gibbons and furniture by Chippendale.

We can’t visit the Lake District without travelling on one of the lakes, so today we have allowed a full day to cruise the lake and visit Bowness on Windermere and Ambleside.

Sadly, we have to go home sometime, but before we bid farewell to the Lakes we’ll pay a visit to Levens Hall.
This property is located at the gateway to the Lake District National Park, five miles south of Kendal in Cumbria.
The stunning Elizabethan House has grown from a stark, imposing pele tower built c1250-1300, into a warm and welcoming privately-owned, family home and gardens, home to the world’s oldest topiary gardens and centre of a thriving 9,500-acre agricultural estate which provides much of the produce for their café, Levens Kitchen .
Beyond the famous topiary gardens you’ll find a romantic old orchard and, separated by the giant beech hedges, magnificent herbaceous borders, as well as the first recorded ha-ha in Britain.
Enjoy the beautiful wall borders, vegetable, herb, fountain and rose gardens, fine lawns, wildflower meadows and willow labyrinth, and see how generations of owners and gardeners have added contemporary design within an historic framework.