Sir Henry Price & Pleasaunce walled gardens

The Sir Henry Price and Pleasaunce walled gardens are located side by side next to the Mansion. Also worth a visit whilst in this area are the Winter Garden and the Monocotyledon Border.

The Sir Henry Price Walled Garden

The Sir Henry Price Garden is designed with informal groups of plants to give a decidedly 'cottage-garden' feel. The impact is heightened by the deliberate limitation of the colour palette to plants with foliage and flowers in pastel shades. The atmosphere is very restful, with grey and silver-leaved artemisias and lavenders providing a perfect foil for other species with pink, blue and lilac flowers.

As normal with a cottage garden, the plants are mostly herbaceous perennials, but tender annuals are added for more interest, with the shrubs giving strength and structure to the design. As only to be expected, the garden is best seen in summer.

The Pleasaunce Walled Garden

The secluded Pleasaunce is entered directly from the Sir Henry Price Garden, and is virtually a garden within a garden, a small central lawn surrounds an attractive stone sun dial on a raised stone circle and is enclosed by wonderfully clipped yew hedges.

There are dramatic arches in the hedges, framing stunning portraits of the garden's features. The yew hedging was originally planted in the time of Sir William Boord (1890-1903) and is clipped once a year in August or September.

There are more flower beds outside the yew hedges but inside the outer walls. These beds are filled with plants from North and South America, with the South American area mostly represented by a bank of hardy fuchsias on the east side of the garden. The wedge shaped bed on the west side of the garden is filled with North American perennials. Some of these are also found in the Sir Henry Price Garden, but here we are free to use bright colours - yellows, reds and oranges - to bold effect. The walls themselves support rare climbing shrubs such as the yellow-flowered honeysuckle, Lonicera tragophylla.

The Winter Garden

Situated just outside the walled gardens, the Winter Garden shows just how to generate colour and interest in the drab months between November and February. There are some familiar names here together with groupings of rarer plants that deserve to be better known. Brightly coloured dogwood and willow stems contrast with the shapes and colours of the dried leaves of ornamental grasses.

The Monocotyledon Border

The Monocotyledon Border runs along the outside walls of the walled gardens and is well worth a visit. Monocotyledons are plants with a single seed leaf (cotyledon) as opposed to those with two seed leaves which are known as dicotyledons.

Many monocotyledons such as lilies, grasses and red-hot pokers (Kniphofia) develop narrow parallel-veined leaves. Visitors undeterred by the scientific name find many familiar plants here ranging from common specimens such as narcissus to the unusual ginger-lilies (Hedychium) which grow well at Wakehurst Place. The border is divided by the path from the Pleasaunce into two sections. These are planted with Monocotyledons from the Southern Hemisphere and from the Northern Hemisphere (nearer the Mansion).

 

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