Meet the new RHS Partner Gardens

1. American Museum & Gardens, Bath

A view of the New American Garden

Created by an Anglo-American couple, Dallas Pratt and John Judkyn in 1961, the museum showcases the American decorative arts and heritage. The striking Grade II listed gardens, (pictured in opening panoramic image) are set in 125 acres of parkland, and feature vast beds of grasses and

Perennials are any plant living for at least three years. The term is also commonly used for herbaceous perennials which grow for many years (To compare: annual = one year, biennial = two years).

2. Andalusia Historic House, Gardens & Arboretum, Pennsylvania, USA

View of Lady Lennox-Boyd’s elegantly reimagined Green Walk in spring

James Biddle, President of the National Trust for Historic Preservation in the USA, gave the aptly named Big House, and nearly 15 acres of land, to the Andalusia Foundation in 1980. The gardens date back more than 200 years – the first created in the late 18th century by avid plantsman, John Craig.
 
From 1888, Letitia Glenn Biddle made her own mark on the planting, adding colourful tulips, hollyhocks, larkspur, gladioli and a lovely ‘American Beauty’ rose cultivar. She went on to found the Garden Club of America in 1913.

Landscape designer Lady Arabella Lennox-Boyd stepped in to update the gardens in 2017-18, adding some 14,000 assorted trees, shrubs, roses and

Perennials are plants that live for multiple years. They come in all shapes and sizes and fill our gardens with colourful flowers and ornamental foliage. Many are hardy and can survive outdoors all year round, while less hardy types need protection over winter. The term herbaceous perennial is used to describe long-lived plants without a permanent woody structure (they die back to ground level each autumn), distinguishing them from trees, shrubs and sub-shrubs.

3. Athelhampton House and Gardens, Dorset

Panoramic view of Athelhampton House, one of England’s finest manor houses

One of England’s finest Tudor manors, Athelhampton was built in 1485. The house was bought by Alfred Cart de Lafontaine in 1891, who engaged Frances Inigo Thomas to design its eight acres of garden in an Arts & Crafts style, divided into five hamstone-walled garden rooms. The signature Pyramid Garden, with its 12x 30ft yew pyramids, once featured in an episode of Dr Who.

Ponds and fountains feature in each area, while the ancient River Piddle winds through the garden, crystal clear and full of trout. A 15th-century dovecote is home to a flock of white doves; everywhere, wildlife is abundant.

Mixed herbaceous plants offer shape, texture and colour throughout summer. Many of the borders are planted in a cottage-garden style inspired by Gertrude Jekyll, while fruit and veg from the kitchen garden are used in the restaurant, and one of the greenhouses is given over to fruit – grape vines, peach, fig, apricot and kiwi.

4. Gilbert White’s House & Gardens, Hampshire

The haha at the end of the main lawn, designed to keep livestock in the meadow

The former home of a famous 18th-century naturalist and author of The Natural History of Selborne – a seminal study of local ecology, never out of print since it was first published in 1789. White spent his adult life observing the wildlife on his doorstep – or ‘watching narrowly’ as he called it.

Restoration in the 1990s saw the reinstatement of hedgerows and the ‘wine pipe seat’ – a seat in a barrel. Also highlighting a historic haha, sundial and fruit wall, and the creation of a new Naturalist’s Garden based on clues from White’s gardening diary, Garden Kalendar (1751–1767).

The kitchen garden has the look and feel of Gilbert’s vegetable and fruit patch, but it’s productive too - supplying the café kitchen with ingredients, growing hops for their brewery and soft fruit for making jams and preserves. 

The gardeners are recreating the style of the garden with a renewed emphasis on habitats for wildlife, which was abundant in Hampshire 300 years ago but would not have played a part in White’s plans; having to conserve nature through habitat management would have made no sense to him. They have had no plan to work from, just paintings and guesswork using Gilbert’s notes, which they used to provide information to visitors.

5. La Mortella Gardens, Italy

Spathodea campanulata, found up the hill behind the tea room in a curve in the rock

These spectacular gardens were created in 1958 on the island of Ischia in the bay of Naples, by Lady Susana Walton, the Argentinian wife of English composer Sir William Walton. The garden gets its name from the myrtle bushes (Myrtus communis) that grow between the rocks.
 
La Mortella is very informal and the planting is bold, exotic and brilliant. It’s the best combination of a highly skilled British botanical approach and the wonderful Italian weather. Ischia is known as the ‘green island’ thanks to its woodlands, and there are panoramic views from Fiora – with a white-washed church on a clifftop overlooking the sea and to the northeast you can see the volcano.

The jungly, lower garden is full of big palms, aroids, rills and fountains, and a colonial teahouse where you can enjoy Italian fare and British teas. You’ll also find magnolias and tender camellias, roses from India and China, and bamboo and maples from Japan. Climb the gentle hill to a more open, sunny, Mediterranean area, where you’ll find cascades of rosemary, myrtle and lavender, collections of Protea, Aloe and Agave.

6. Mothecombe House and Gardens, Devon

Giant Onopordum acanthium in the Bee Garden in front of Mothecombe House

Situated above a Devon beach at the mouth of the Erme estuary on the Flete Estate, sits this Queen Anne house, built in 1710. A walled garden with terraces designed by Edwin Lutyens is planted with wisteria, irises and agapanthus. Three Victorian walled gardens include a pollinator garden and a no-dig cut flower garden. There’s also an orchard and a camellia walk designed by Lionel Fortescue.

The Mildmay-White family has owned the property since 1872. Current owner Anne Mildmay-White redesigned the garden in 2012 after reading Dave Goulson’s ‘A Sting in the Tale: My Adventures with Bumblebees’. Everything they do is pollinator friendly – turning horse paddocks into a wildflower meadow for instance and creating habitats with long and short grass. There are solitary bee hotels and logs for wild bees to nest in, and fun but educational bumble bees safaris to join.

7. Natural Surroundings, Norfolk

View from the Herb Garden and willow fence across the wet meadows

This eight-acre wildflower garden was established in 1989, on the Bayfield Estate near Holt in Norfolk. Environmentalist Anne Harrap took ownership in 2014, with her husband Simon.

With 22 different cottage-style garden rooms to explore, each is packed with ideas to attract garden wildlife, such as showing how to build a hibernaculum for amphibians. There are ponds, woodland, a formal herb garden and even an area to see ‘Plants from the Dark Side’, which are all spiky, smelly or poisonous.

Eighty per cent of the planting is for wildlife in some form or other – be it shelter, food or water – but there are rare plant habitats to see too: chalk banks, wet meadows, alpines in raised beds and greenhouses. There are wild daffodil displays and cowslips in spring, followed by a profusion of nectar-rich wet meadow flowers in summer.

8. Riverhill Himalayan Gardens, Kent

Main view into the Walled Garden with  sculptural grass terraces and water feature

With fabulous views across the Weald of Kent, this garden is filled with botanical treasures. Home to the Rogers family since 1840, there are 12-acres of historic gardens to explore, from the manicured Walled Garden to the Wild Jungle, fragrant Rose Walk and spectacular Edwardian Rock Garden. The Himalayan theme comes from their historic collection of rhododendrons and azaleas.

The garden was established by John Rogers in 1842, an esteemed botanist who co-founded the Royal Horticultural Society. He was patron of many Victorian plant-hunting expeditions and bought the land because of its sheltered position and lime-free soil.

Visitor favourites include the garden’s ‘Festival of Bluebells’ in mid-May, and the Great Rockery, which has been restored with a vast collection of more than 80 cultivars. Look out for the wild wisteria and collection of magnolias, peonies and potager, too.

9. Sandringham Gardens, Norfolk

Formal design complements cottage-garden-style planting in the gardens

Returning as a Partner Garden, Sandringham occupies 60 acres, with a formal garden surrounding the house, developed in turn by each monarch since 1863, when King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra bought the Estate.

Highlights include the lakeside rockwork by James Pulham, and The North End Garden by Geoffrey Jelicoe. More recent changes have been the addition of a Topiary Garden to the west of the house, marking the Coronation of King Charles III, which includes 5,000 yew plants that form hedging, and 38 pieces of topiary, accompanied by more than 4,000 bulbs, and perennials including Veronicastrum, Phlox and Echinacea.

The central areas will also feature several yellow and pink roses such as Rosa ‘Buttercup’, ‘Skylark’ and ‘Tottering-by-Gently’. This area was once the site of a formal parterre in the 1800s and was subsequently used for crops as part of the ‘Dig for Victory’ campaign in the Second World War.

Head Gardener Jack Lindfield’s favourite part of the garden is The Shrubbery. This area was instigated by Her Majesty the late Queen Elizabeth and developed by Sir Eric Savill in the 1960s, originally made up of spare plants from The Valley Gardens at Windsor Great Park. The pathway lies beneath a canopy of mature rhododendrons, camellias, magnolias and acers, while the understorey is a mix of azaleas, hydrangeas and woodland perennials.