Gardens of Delight in Dorset
It was a brilliantly sunny day in June when my wife and I boarded the coach that was to take us to six of the finest gardens in Dorset. This was on a special interest tour for gardeners and we were fortunate enough to have a horticultural expert with us to point out plants of interest and to answer our many questions. We were based in Bournemouth and had three days to visit the six gardens, one in the morning and the other in the afternoon each day.
Our first port of call was Minterne House Gardens, an enchanting 20-acre woodland garden set in a peaceful valley in the heart of Dorset. We were welcomed on arrival by the Hon. Henry Digby who kindly invited the group into the house, gave a short talk on the family history, and showed us a DVD of a BBC Gardeners’ World programme when Carol Klein visited the gardens. This great house has been home to the Churchill and Digby families since 1620.
Then we set off on a tour of the gardens that form a horseshoe below the house with a series of streams, waterfalls and ponds surrounded by a glorious array of Himalayan magnolia, rhododendrons, hydrangeas and maples. Many of these exotic plants were brought home from the far-flung corners of the world by plant hunters sponsored by the Digby family.
Along the trail we found ourselves walking under the enormous leaves of the Brazilian giant rhubarb plant Gunnera Manicata that grows to a height of 8ft. Very handy to shelter under if it’s raining!
After discovering more delights we said our farewells and were on our way to our second garden of the day: Athelhampton House at Puddletown near Dorchester. This lovely old manor was built in 1485 by Sir William Martyn who also enclosed 160 acres of deer park and then in 1891 Alfred Carl de Lafontain bought the house and created
the delightful formal gardens we can see today. These old walled gardens include an octagonal Cloister Garden and 12 yew pyramids in the Great Court Garden. We wandered along the paths past the Great Court to the Corona, the Canal and Octagonal Pond gardens and so on to the flowing River Piddle that forms a natural boundary.
Thomas Hardy, the great novelist, was a Dorset man who visited Athelhampton regularly when his father, a stonemason, was working on the house. During this time Hardy painted a watercolour of the house; he also set his poem “The Dame of Athelhall” at Athelhampton.
After enjoying a refreshing ice cream we boarded the coach and returned to Bournemouth for dinner and a walk along the prom.
On our second day of garden visiting we boarded the coach and set off through the glorious Dorset countryside to Compton Acres in Poole. Here we found once again a selection of delightful gardens, amongst others the Roman Garden, the Grotto, the Grand Italian Garden, the Palm Court and the Wooded Valley. The 10 acres of gardens are privately owned and were created by Thomas William Simpson in the 1920s who at the time was strongly influenced by the Arts and Crafts Movement.
We followed our guide along the trail as he pointed out the beautiful Asiatic flowering shrubs in the Japanese Garden with its tea house and thatched summer house containing works of art imported from Japan in the 1920s. My favourite, though, was the Grand Italian Garden with its water fountains, statuary, topiary and mass plantings that formed a wonderful scene in front of the gracious Italian villa.
Time for a leisurely lunch and then on to our next port of call at Cranborne Manor Garden.
The manor, a Grade 1 listed building, was originally a royal hunting lodge built by King John at the beginning of the 13th century; however, early in the 17th century James I granted the manor to Robert Cecil, 1st Earl of Salisbury, in recognition of his role in engineering the peaceful transition from the Tudor dynasty to the Stuart when James came south from Scotland to claim the English throne. At this time Salisbury had the manor remodelled.
We walked through the entrance to a walled kitchen garden and then along an avenue of old apple and pear espaliers with, on the right, a glorious display of colourful wild garden flowers. Through a gate at the bottom of the kitchen garden we caught our first glimpse of the ancient Cranborne Manor. We entered the north garden where the borders were filled with white and blue flowering shrubs and a variety of colourful roses. Then down Church Walk with a fine view of the 15th-century church tower of St. Mary and St. Bartholomew; here the borders were filled with delphiniums, alliums, artichokes and salvias. Then on through the orchard, the Magnolia Garden, the Chalk Walk and the Cottage Garden.
And so the garden tour on the second day had come to an end but the best was yet to come for in the evening we had a talk by our expert gardening host on “Autumn Colour in the Garden”.
Our third and last day was once again lovely and sunny with a clear blue sky. We boarded the coach and were soon on our way to the Abbotsbury Subtropical Gardens near Weymouth. In 1765 the 1st Countess of Ilchester, Elizabeth FoxStrangeways, established the garden as a kitchen garden for her nearby castle. This 30-acre garden is filled with rare and exotic plants from all over the world, mainly introduced over the years by plant hunting relatives of the countess.
The gardens are in a wooded and sheltered valley leading down towards Chesil Beach and this ideal environment produces a delightful micro-climate ideal for tropical plants and these begin right by the entrance. We made our way through the Colonial Restaurant and out to the sunlit gardens. Marvelling at the exotic plants we stopped while our guide told about the Handkerchief Tree ( Davidia Involucrata), a deciduous tree with its origins in China; cameras were produced and photos taken. Then on to the Mediterranean Garden with the almost prehistoric looking Echium candicans with its blue flowers and its rearing relative Echium pininiana, both natives of Madeira. Along the trail we came to the Southern Hemisphere Garden with its colourful plants, of special interest the red and yellow Gloriosa rothschildiana, actually a bulb which grows climbing stems each summer. This is a non-hardy plant native to South Africa.
So many specialist gardens and so much to see, after which it was time for a light lunch in the Colonial Restaurant and we were back on the coach for our last port of call.
This was to be at Bennett’s Water Gardens at Chickerell, Weymouth, a delightfully tranquil garden to end our tour. The National Plant Collection of Water Lilies is held in this eight-acre garden with a Monetstyle Japanese bridge as the centrepiece. Over 140 varieties produce tens of thousands of flowers from late spring through to autumn, creating one of the most outstanding displays of water lilies in the country. There are a series of eight ponds to walk around, including the Roach Pond, the Orfe Pond, the White Lily Pond and the Elodea Pond.
We were there on a hot June day and it was a delight just to sit by one of the ponds, relax and take it all in. It is difficult to believe that this was once the site of a brickworks back in 1859. It is interesting to note that many of the original water lilies planted here by the Bennett family in 1959 came from the same nursery in France that supplied Monet’s garden in Giverny and the varieties that Monet painted are among the collections held here.
We sat on the patio of the Cafe Monet overlooking the water gardens enjoying a welcome cup of tea and thought back to all the gardens we had seen during our tour and realised how lucky we were that such glorious gardens are there for us all to enjoy in this England of ours.