More Great Gardens and Houses of East Anglia – 2023

On our journey to East Anglia, we’ll stop at Saffron Walden for refreshments in this lovely town. Whilst here we’ll visit Bridge End Garden.
Bridge End Garden was created around 1840 by Francis Gibson, a local Quaker businessman, who also built the Fry Art Gallery. Francis’s daughter, Elizabeth, married Lewis Fry of Bristol and, in 1918, the Fry family leased the garden to the local council. It has been open to the public ever since.
Over time, Bridge End Garden fell into neglect. An ambitious restoration project took place between 2003 and 2008 and it is now is listed as Grade II* by Historic England.
Geometric swirls of box and closely clipped yew form a sunken parterre in the Dutch Garden, best seen from the viewing platform or the long walks. It was re-planted to the design sketched by Gertrude Jekyll when she visited in 1912. The long border, fronted by standard wisterias, is a vibrant backdrop in summer. Terminating the long walkway above the sunken parterre is a classical Pavilion.
The Wilderness is a shady grove, designed for wandering and reflection, with trained laburnums down the centre, abundant spring flowers and a variety of Victorian shrubs planted throughout.
The formal Rose Garden is planted with Victorian varieties and is the oldest part of the garden. Though short-lived, the blooming season is a wonder to the senses!
The Walled Garden houses two reconstructed glasshouses and contains Victorian varieties of espalier and cordon-trained fruit trees, together with colourful herbaceous borders and the beehives that help to pollinate the blooms.
The hedge maze, beyond the Walled Garden, was re-planted in 1984 with over a thousand young yews. In its centre is a viewing platform with views over the maze and the countryside. The maze is surrounded by native and ornamental trees.
In the evening we’ll arrive at our home for the next two nights, the Maids Head Hotel in Norwich, a lovely traditional place to stay.

Today, we head to two great stately homes: Holkham, which is associated with Anne Glenconner (who wrote Lady in Waiting ion 2019), and Hindringham Hall in the afternoon.
At Holkham Hall we will enjoy a private guided tour of the home and have time to enjoy the gardens.
In the afternoon, we’ll visit Hindringham Hall for another private tour, enjoy the grounds and even have tea and cake included!

For our final full day in East Anglia, we visit the most amazing gardens: East Ruston Old Vicarage Garden.
We’ve allowed a long time to visit this garden and to sit and relax within it because the place is simply heaven – quite possibly the most beautiful garden in the UK!
Enjoy 32 acres of garden rooms, herbaceous borders, sub-tropical gardens, box parterre, sunken rose garden, Mediterranean garden and woodland garden.
Being a private garden and designed by the owners directly (who clearly have a special talent) you can see the love and beauty that’s sometimes lacking with gardens operated by Trusts or company operators.

We start our last day with a visit to one of Norwich’s best kept secrets: The Bishop’s Garden.
The 4-acre garden in the centre of the city is the Bishop of Norwich’s historic private garden and is full of herbaceous borders, jungle walk, woodland walk, fruit orchard etc. A hidden gem indeed!
Finally we visit Helmingham Hall, which is on our way home.
This is a moated manor house begun by John Tollemache in 1480 and has been owned by the Tollemache family ever since. We can’t visit the Grade I-listed house but we will see the park and formal gardens, which are also Grade I-listed on the Register of Historic Parks and Gardens.
Their website describes the gardens as: “… hard to exaggerate the effect this beautiful park, with its red deer, spectacular moated Hall in mellow patterned red brick with its famous gardens will have on the visitor. The whole combines to give an extraordinary impression of beauty and tranquillity. A classic parterre flanked by hybrid musk roses lies before a stunning walled kitchen garden with exquisite herbaceous borders and beds of vegetables interspersed by tunnels of sweet peas, runner beans and gourds. On the other side lies a herb and knot garden behind which is a rose garden of unsurpassable beauty.”