Hestercombe Gardens

Hestercombe Garden is the third of the three famous gardens I'm starting out with.  Just by luck this innocent trip planner happened to include these three famous gardens on our very first trip - lotsa brownie points for doing that.  It's found in southwest England, west of Taunton.

The Hestercombe estate was acquired by the Warre family in 1391, and held by them for nearly 500 years.  During the later 1700s a landscape garden was created in the stream valley to the east, with various temples and an artificial waterfall.  It became overgrown and was unrecognized for over 100 years until it was rediscovered in the 1990s.

But it's the big formal garden that Hestercombe is renowned for.  The house is the dominant feature of the garden, though it was being used as a fire station when we visited.  Today it has been restored to the Hestercombe Gardens Trust and features an art gallery, exhibition and meeting space. 

Extending in front of the house is the spectacular formal garden, created starting in 1904.  Designed by the famous architect Edward Lutyens and the famous gardener, Gertrude Jekyll, this provides a unique combination of stonework and formal design with luxuriant flowers.

Nowhere have I seen a garden laid out like this; just look at the layout!.  You arrive on the upper level and look down over the spectacular combination of formal design and luxuriant planting.

Bordering the enormous formal garden are parallel strips of lawn centered by stone rills through which a tiny stream runs, dropping down a stone wall at the end.

The pergola at the end extends across the entire garden, held up by alternating round and square stone pillars.

The Lutyens-designed stonework is obvious several other places in the garden,  I remember being particularly struck by these steps which had tiny daisies growing in all the joints when we were there.

Here is another example of that combination of stonework and lavish flowers.

The older orangery sits to the east of the house.

And here's a glimpse of the artificial waterfall and stream in the small valley to the east, an area that merits much more exploring,