Hidcote Manor Garden: A National Trust Treasure

Long before we arrived in the UK, during one of my research sessions to find places we might like to visit I came across Hidcote. It is only an hour's drive from Duston and it looked like a great place to visit. In fact you could camp out over night one weekend in August, with the opportunity of seeing wild life and I had thought that might well be on our list of things to do. So when we were sitting scrolling through the TV channels one night looking for something to watch a couple of weeks ago, my eye was drawn to a documentary about it.

After watching this programme our resolve to make the effort to get to see it was even stronger though we had long given up the idea of camping out. So on Tuesday we made a detour on our way to Norfolk, especially to visit it. The history is a story in itself, with it's owner and designer Lawrence Johnston, being nicked name The Quiet American Gardener. His mother purchased the property in the Cotswolds in 1907, with the intention of him becoming a gentleman farmer. However his interests lay in horticulture and garden design and much to his mother's dismay this is where his focus lay.

The garden is divided into a series of outdoor rooms, each with its own distinct style and character - from formal rooms to semi natural plantings found in the wilderness. The rooms are divided by hedges, ( over 2 miles of them) providing the shelter needed to grow the wide variety of plants found here. Johnston was also a plant collector and made several expeditions to collect unusual plants. There are several plants that bear his or the Hidcote name and include a climbing rose, a fuchsia, a verbena, a penstemon, a lavender and the popular Hypericum "Hidcote".

Hypericum "Hidcote"

Hidcote lavender

We wandered our way around the many 'rooms' before joining a gardener's talk about the history of the garden. It seems that Mr Johnston was rather a private man, never marrying and not always accepted by the mainstream horticulturists of the day. Before he died, he gifted his property to The National Trust and it is now one of the most influential gardens in Britain today.

We took copious photos of which I am still to transfer to the iPad but that will be a treat to come for those interested in gardens and design. It certainly is a garden that you could return to many times and each experience would differ depending on the season. We probably were just a little late in the summer as many of the plants were past their best, though we didn't feel this detracted from our experience in any way.

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