Gardens, glorious gardens

11 April 2012

Give yourself a break from pulling up the bindweed and propping the sagging hollyhocks. Our guide gives you the lowdown on Britain's finest gardens, where the ideas and inspiration are as bountiful as the borders.

Helmingham Hall Gardens, Stowmarket, Suffolk

Picturesque Helmingham Hall, built in the 15th century, stands in its own deep-water moat, while another moat, made in Saxon times to enclose cattle, contains a spectacular walled garden. Here you can see a staggering, state-of-the-art double herbaceous border, backed along its length with climbing roses that spill onto a lawn path like an emerald carpet. Colours are carefully co-ordinated in soft drifts of pinks, blues, mauves, whites and cream.

The Elizabethan kitchen garden, surrounded by herbaceous borders and old-fashioned roses, has immaculate fruit trees fanned against the wall, and broad arches swathed with sweet peas, gourds, and runner beans across the turf paths.

On the other side of the manor house, there is an aromatic herb garden full of old roses and a historical knot garden with bands of low box that appear interwoven, made by pruning the box at different levels. This is gardening on a grand scale, and it's enchanting.

There are also safari rides through the surrounding 400-acre deer park to see the deer, Soay sheep and Highland cattle.

Opening hours: garden open Sundays 2pm to 6pm. Admission: £3.75, children £2. Information: 01473 890 363.

Penshurst Place, Kent

More than a mile of yew hedging encloses the self contained garden rooms, all with different personalities, and many bursting with punchy colour right through summer.

Three of the best are a Union Jack garden of red and white roses lined with hedges of blue-toned lavender, a garden for the blind at the entrance - with raised beds of aromatic plants and the plash of water on pebbles - and, on the south side of the ancient battlemented house, a symmetrical Italian garden with 100-year-old gingko tree and central lily pond.

This garden merrily spans the centuries: Lanning Roper designed the no-holds-barred blue and yellow border in the 1960s, a long, double line of oak trees was planted just seven years ago, and two ponds from medieval times have been resurrected and stocked with fish.

This Sunday there is a summer pantomime in the Stage Garden from 2pm to 4pm, and on 26 July, candlelit opera in the Baron's Hall, which will also accommodate cabaretstyle seating and a jazz band on 9 August.

Opening hours: house and gardens open daily, house noon to 5.30pm (4pm on Saturdays), garden 10.30am to 6pm. Admission to both: £6.50, concessions £6, children £4.50, family £18. Information: 01892 870307.

Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew

At Kew Gardens the amazing giant waterlily, Victoria amazonica, is still producing, and those stunning flowers are augmented by Jo Cound's photographs of waterlilies, rising out of the pond, mirroring the plants in the water.

But there are other diversions outside the Waterlily House, many of which tie in with Kew's summer festival theme - Colour Sensations - which explores the use and importance of colour in human and plant culture.

This summer, expect stunning colour in the order beds, herbaceous borders and Duke's Garden, and gape at the Colour Spectrum, a 60m long plantscape with sinuous ribbons of red, blue and yellow flowers, interleaved with plantings of fresh green, warm red, vibrant orange and calm blue. Some of these plants, such as scabious and coreopsis, will feature in the hands-on natural dyes workshops on Sundays 21 and 28 July, 2.30pm to 4.30pm; the dyed fabrics will make you long to rush home and crush a vatful of marigolds.

But if you're more interested in why plants are the colours they are, and how they use their colour to attract pollinating insects, join a Colour Sensation tour through the Gardens every Wednesday until the end of August.

Garden photographer Clive Nichols celebrates colour in his plant portraits exhibition, New Shoots, and there are four new inspirational gardens designed by Kew's diploma students that use plant colour rather as impressionist artists use paint.

August's must-see highlights will be the Golden Vista of sunflowers, one kilometre long, stretching from the Pagoda to the Palm House, to mark the Golden Jubilee, and the opening of the beautiful royal folly Queen Charlotte's cottage, for one month only, including August Bank Holiday.

Opening hours: Kew Gardens are open daily from 9.30am and closes 6.30pm Monday to Friday and 7.30pm on weekends and bank holidays. Admission: £6.50, concessions £4.50. Children 16 and under free. Call 020 8332 5655/5633 for all tour details.

Lambeth Palace, Lambeth, SE1

The eight acres of historic gardens at Lambeth Palace are only open to the public twice a year, but on 25 July you will be able to see them in full bloom at the Garden Party held for children's charity Barnardo's.

There will be cream teas, a barber shop quartet, the Amici Singers female choir, as well as a Jubilee trail and a magician for children. Gardening buffs can buy plants, saplings, books and gardening equipment, as well pose their horticultural problems in a Q and A session to a panel, including expert Pippa Greenwood, garden designer Anthony Noel, Patricia Greene (Jill Archer of The Archers), actress Brenda Blethyn and the head gardener at Lambeth Palace Alistair Cook.

Tickets to the Barnardo's Jubilee Garden Party are by advance booking only; adults £12, concessions £8, children £3.50, on 0845 769 7967, or through the charity's website on www.barnardos.org.uk.

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