Historical and Contemporary Gardens of Southern England & the RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2027

Day 1: Tuesday 18 May, East Molesey & Hampton Court Palace

• Tour commences at 2pm in the foyer of The Mitre Hotel
• Hampton Court Palace Gardens
• Welcome Dinner

Meeting Point: The tour commences at 2pm in the foyer of the The Mitre Hotel, Hampton Court located directly opposite the historic Hampton Court Palace and Gardens.

We begin with a visit to the gardens of Hampton Court Palace which feature 60 acres of spectacular formal gardens and 750 acres of parkland. Highlights include the famous Tudor-style maze; The Great Vine planted in 1768 by Capability Brown; colourful Pond Gardens; the Tudor Kitchen Garden which recreates a 17th-century walled garden; and the impressive Baroque Great Fountain Garden, blending Tudor and Stuart designs. The central feature of the landscaped gardens is the Long Water, a magnificent, 800 metre-long canal which was completed around 1660–1662 by King Charles II, and heavily influenced by French landscape designer André Le Nôtre.

In the evening, we enjoy a welcome dinner at the hotel’s restaurant. (Overnight East Molesey) D

Day 2: Wednesday 19 May, Chelsea Flower Show

• The Chelsea Flower Show (Members Day)

Today is dedicated to the Chelsea Flower Show, located in the grounds of Sir Christopher Wren’s Royal Hospital (1689). Around the periphery of the grounds are display gardens, whilst inside the giant marquee are exhibits by plant growers. Here you will see perfect displays of everything horticultural from bonsai to bulbs, rhododendrons to roses. This visit has been designed so that you are free to wander through the event at your leisure. (Overnight East Molesey) B

Day 3: Thursday 20 May, East Molesey – Haywards Heath – East Grinstead – Gravetye Manor – Forest Row

• Wakehurst & the Millennium Seed Bank
• Standen House & Gardens
• Gravetye Manor designed by William Robinson

This morning we visit Wakehurst which comprises a late 16th-century mansion, a mainly 20th-century garden, and Kew’s Royal Botanic Gardens Millennium Seed Bank. The garden covers 490 acres and includes walled and water gardens, woodland and wetland conservation areas. They were largely created by Gerald Loder (later Lord Wakehurst) who purchased the estate in 1903. He was succeeded by Sir Henry Price who left Wakehurst to the nation in 1963.

Nearby lies Standen House, an Arts and Crafts home designed between 1891 and 1894 by architect Philip Webb. Its interior is decorated with carpets, furniture, fabrics and wallpapers designed by William Morris. The surrounding garden complements the beauty of the house.

We continue to Gravetye Manor. Built in 1598, this Elizabethan house is the former home of landscape gardener William Robinson (1838-1935), author of The English Flower Garden and pioneer of “wild gardening”. The gardens are set in the Arts and Crafts style, focusing on a more natural, informal, and “wild” garden approach that contrasted with the formal Victorian style of the time. Robinson’s work at Gravetye Manor was highly influential, and his methods inspired other figures central to the Arts and Crafts movement, such as Gertrude Jekyll. After exploring the garden, we will enjoy dinner at the manor. (Overnight Forest Row) BD

Day 4: Friday 21 May, Forest Row – Firle – Haywards Heath – Forest Row

• Charleston: Home of the Bloomsbury Group
• Town Place Garden

This morning is dedicated to the brilliant and eccentric Bloomsbury Group with a private guided tour of Charleston. In 1916 the artists Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant moved to Charleston which became the meeting place for a group of artists, writers and intellectuals, including Clive Bell, David Garnett, John Maynard Keynes, Virginia and Leonard Woolf, E.M. Forster, Lytton Strachey and Roger Fry. Inspired by Italian fresco painting and the Post-Impressionists, the artists decorated the walls, doors and furniture at Charleston. The art collection includes work by Renoir, Picasso, Derain, Matthew Smith, Sickert, Tomlin and Delacroix. The walled garden was redesigned with mosaics, box hedges, gravel pathways and ponds, and with a touch of Bloomsbury humour in the placing of statuary.

This afternoon we meet Anthony and Maggie McGrath who created the garden at Town Place in West Sussex. This three-acre garden of interconnecting avenues and rooms is a living, breathing artwork, transformed over the course of 34 years. Maggie’s crowning achievements are the rose garden and the herbaceous long borders with their repeated swathes of salvia, nepeta and knautia. Anthony’s designs are more conceptual. There’s the Chequers area with its giant chessboard, topiarised Henry Moore replicas, and the Toune Priory – a full-scale folly made of hornbeam, complete with cloisters, Gothic windows and giant buttresses. (Overnight Forest Row) BLD

Day 5: Saturday 22 May, Forest Row – Dial Post – Petworth – Winchester

• Knepp Walled Garden and rewilding project
• Petworth House and Park

Knepp Wildland is the first major lowland rewilding project in England. It comprises 1,400 hectares of former arable and dairy farmland in the grounds of Knepp Castle. The conversion from intensive agriculture started in 2000 and the land now supports many rare species. It has become a major nesting site for nightingales; a breeding hotspot for purple emperor butterflies; the site of the first white stork chicks raised in the wild in England for 600 years; and is now the home to the first beavers living in the wild in Sussex in 400 years. The Walled Garden at Knepp Castle was reimagined to a plan by Tom Stuart-Smith.

After lunch, we continue our journey west to Petworth, a late 17th-century Grade I-listed country house built in 1688 by Charles Seymour, 6th Duke of Somerset, and altered in the 1870s to the design of the architect Anthony Salvin. It contains intricate woodcarvings by Grinling Gibbons, and one of the finest art collections of paintings and sculpture in the care of the National Trust, including works by Turner and Van Dyck. The parkland was landscaped by ‘Capability’ Brown during the 1750s and 1760s. (Overnight Winchester) BL

Day 6: Sunday 23 May, Winchester – West Dean – Fontwell – Winchester

• Jim Buckland and Sarah Wain’s allotment garden & private garden
• Denmans Garden designed by John Brookes MBE

Jim Buckland and Sarah Wain were the inspirational leaders of West Dean Garden team for over 25 years. Now retired, Jim and Sarah will show us their allotment in the village and their private garden.

Denmans Garden is a renowned 4-acre, Grade II-listed contemporary country garden that evolved from a 19th-century estate into a pioneering, naturalistic landscape. Created by plantswomen, Joyce Robinson, and later redesigned by famed landscape designer John Brookes MBE, it is known for its “glorious disarray”, gravel gardens, and dry river beds. The diversity of its plants and its unique planting style have resulted in a garden with year-round interest, structure, and colour. (Overnight Winchester) BL

Day 7: Monday 24 May, Winchester – Mottisfont – Forde Abbey – Ilsington

• Mottisfont & its National Collection of Pre-1900 Shrub Roses
• Forde Abbey and Gardens

Mottisfont Abbey is a historical priory and country estate in Hampshire. The walled garden is home to the National Collection of Pre-1900 Shrub Roses, which creates an annual spectacle in early summer. Unlike modern species, these historic roses tend to flower just once a year, so their blooming is an extraordinary annual sight. Nowadays the annual festival of colour and scent is likely to be at its height in May.

We leave Hampshire for Dorset to visit Forde Abbey, a former Cistercian monastery. Much of the original monastery including the abbey church was demolished in the period after the dissolution. The 30 acres of Grade II-listed gardens include an arboretum and several water features. A highlight is the Centenary Fountain, claimed to be the highest-powered fountain in England at 49m in height. (Overnight Ilsington) BLD

Day 8: Tuesday 25 May, Ilsington – Buckland Monachorum – Dartmouth – Ilsington

• The Garden House
• Little Dartmouth Farm: with gardens designed by Dan Pearson OBE

This morning we journey across Dartmoor National Park to visit the the Garden House at Buckland Monachorum. This renowned 10-acre “plantsman’s paradise”, is often cited as one of Britain’s finest. Developed since the 1940s from an old vicarage, it features a blend of formal, romantic, and naturalistic planting, including a walled garden with a 16th-century tower, arboretum, and wildlife meadow.

After lunch we drive towards the southern coast of Devon to Edward and Sally Benthall’s Little Dartmouth Farm. The main house sits at the centre of a 5-acre garden incorporating parkland, a decorative walled garden, two glasshouses, a productive garden and an herb terrace. It was designed by Dan Pearson OBE with his naturalistic and understated approach that creates serene spaces by working with the site’s inherent qualities. Biodiversity and sustainability were key priorities and, as the design started on the periphery and worked inwards, native hedges and trees were planted, blending the garden into the landscape. (Overnight Ilsington) BLD

Day 9: Wednesday 26 May, Ilsington – Castle Drogo – Torrington – Taunton

• Castle Drogo: Castle & Lutyens-designed terraced garden
• RHS Garden Rosemoor

This morning we visit Castle Drogo, the grandest house designed by the master who is arguably England’s greatest late 19th- early 20th-century architect, Sir Edwin Lutyens (1869-1944), architect of New Delhi. Lutyens’ design, which was only partially constructed, borrowed elements from medieval and Tudor castle construction, melding these with a minimalist contemporary style and innovative modernist features. The castle’s formal garden, designed by Lutyens with the assistance of Gertrude Jekyll, contrasts with its setting on the edge of Dartmoor. The garden is noted for its rhododendrons and magnolias, herbaceous borders, rose garden, shrub garden and circular grass tennis court now used for croquet.

RHS Garden Rosemoor was originally created by Lady Anne Berry who began planting her garden in 1959. In 1988 she gifted the site to the Royal Horticultural Society. This breathtaking 65-acre display garden is known for its picturesque valley setting, extensive woodland, and exceptional rose collections. It blends “garden rooms” like the vibrant Hot Garden and serene Cool Garden with romantic, traditional cottage gardens, offering year-round horticultural interest. The Queen Mother’s Rose Garden and the Shrub Rose Garden host over 250 varieties and over 2000 roses. (Overnight Taunton) B

Day 10: Thursday 27 May, Taunton – Wadeford – Hestercombe – Taunton

• Clayhanger House and Garden: workshop with Em. Prof. James Hitchmough
• Hestercombe House and Garden
• Farewell Dinner

This morning we meet world-renowned landscape designer James Hitchmough at his private home, Clayhanger House. James is Emeritus Professor of Horticultural Ecology at the Department of Landscape Architecture at the University of Sheffield. During a morning workshop, he will discuss his research and practice into creating and managing ecologically based designed plant communities.

Hestercombe Gardens is a stunning 50-acre, Grade I-listed estate featuring three distinct, restored garden eras: Georgian, Victorian, and Edwardian. It is renowned for its combination of formal Edwardian designs by Gertrude Jekyll and Edwin Lutyens with a 18th-century landscape valley. Hestercombe’s Formal Garden is arguably the finest example of their collaboration. (Overnight Taunton) BLD

Day 11: Friday 28 May, Taunton – Tour Ends

• Tour concludes in the morning
• At leisure/Check out

Our tour ends in Taunton after breakfast. The hotel is located a short distance from the Taunton railway station which provides regular connections to London via the Great Western Railway. B