Old Park Barn, Stoke Goldington
Another lovely garden to visit for those who didn’t manage to join us for an evening visit to Old Park Barn in Stoke Goldington in June.
It is a lovely 3 acre garden with formal beds, woodland areas, a beautiful meadow, water features, a stream, a vegetable plot, sculptural details and little paths running here there and everywhere. I kept thinking I had got to a dead end only to find a little path leading somewhere different. All surrounded by peaceful fields in a quiet village! Planting was lovely and we were assured everything is done in an organic and sustainable way, everything is recycled and re used.
The hosts, James and Emily, were very welcoming and hospitable, serving our 30 strong group tea, coffee and biscuits in a comfortable and shaded area on one of the hottest evenings of the year. They had many plants for sale, all perennials and grown on site from their own plants. They were very informative and more than willing to share their gardening philosophy.
The garden appeared on Gardeners’ World with Arit taking us on a guided tour in the winter months. It is still available on Catch up TV in Gardeners’ World, Winter Specials 2025/26, Episode 4 and is well worth watching, especially if you happened to be on the visit in June this year!
Unfortunately it is only open on NGS days and for booked groups, in June/July.
The section below is the piece written by Emily and James for the National Garden Scheme:
About Old Park Barn
We designed and made the garden and after 28 years it is constantly evolving.
Near the house a series of terraces, cut into the sloping site, become the formal part of the design with long and cross vistas, lawns and deep borders with drifts of perennials, specimen shrubs, trees, clematis and climbing roses. A careful selection of plants that suit our clay soil and the environment, which are only watered during their first year.
Paths and slopes link a series of quiet sitting areas and lead to a small orchard and a wildlife pond surrounded by dense planting. Between these is a newly planted area featuring ornamental grasses and late flowering perennials with open sky and gravel paths. Beyond this is a flower meadow with mown paths and swathes of plants chosen for wildlife. The meadow is fringed by a horseshoe of deciduous trees planted at the Millennium and containing a serpentine walk with woodland bulbs, shade loving perennials, mosses and ferns. At the southernmost tip of the garden is an organic vegetable plot created in 2024 using “no dig” principles, and a log store. A stream garden forms the western boundary between the garden and neighbouring fields.
We try to garden in a sustainable way, propagating our own plants, avoiding using mains water to irrigate and with much of the materials we use recycled from the garden and the local environment. We are constantly evolving the planting and layout, often inspired by great gardens we have visited and new plants we find. We hope to share our love of plants and design with our visitors.
(Old Park Barn,
Dag Lane,
Stoke Goldington,
Buckinghamshire,
MK16 8NY)
A new addition for recommended gardens and the first by one of our members other than myself!
Nevill Holt Gardens, Market Harborough
We visited Nevill Holt Gardens, just 7 miles north-east of Market Harborough, on 14 June as part of the 2026 Nevill Holt Festival. Nevill Holt Hall is a very impressive Grade 1 Listed building although not open to visitors. It is set within 10 acres of beautiful gardens designed by a Chelsea Gold Medal winner.
The landscape setting is stunning. From a specially constructed 'sunken' viewing platform there are breathtaking views across the valley towards Rockingham Castle. You could sit there for hours just taking in the views.
Colour-themed herbaceous borders line the main approach to the Hall behind which are no fewer than three beautiful walled gardens, including a kitchen garden. We could have sat in the romantic, walled rose garden all afternoon. It is one of the loveliest rose gardens we have ever visited, just like a secret garden.
The gardens are definitely worth a visit!
Sue Moss
Bridgemere Show Gardens - Nantwich
We recently visited Bridgmere Show Gardens near Nantwich on our way back from a speaking engagement in North Wales as a way of getting good value from a long trip. It certainly was good value as the gardens were lovely.
Many of them are gardens which won various medals at Chelsea, Hampton Court and Tatton Park RHS shows as well as some other shows and you could certainly see why they won such high awards,
They have settled in and look as though they have been there for ever, so you can see what happens to those immaculate show gardens after a few years, less immaculate but no less lovely and interesting. All set in a large wooded area surrounded by trees and with views of the extensive nursery beds.
We visited on a Saturday in June, the weather was not brilliant but not too bad and it was very peaceful and quiet. There were quite a few other visitors but you could really enjoy wandering right into most of the gardens which you never get to do at RHS shows!
Only two were unavailable to wander through but easily viewed from all round outside.
When you have had enough of the beautiful gardens there is one of the largest garden centres in the country to wander round, that really was busy, and I defy anyone to leave without purchasing something. Two cafes and a big restaurant and as if that wasn’t enough a lot of large shops too, Hobbycraft, Lakeland, Pavers, Regatta, Cotton Traders, Ripples Water life, a pet store and probably many more, we are not great shoppers when there are plants and gardens to look at!
We would both recommend a visit there, especially as it is not far off the M6 if you are travelling up and down the country. A couple of hours should suffice for the Show Gardens if you can resist all the other attractions available!
Sue Wray
Sezincote House and Gardens and Bourton House Garden
This was originally suggested by one of our members which was followed up by a Garden Society outing which included both Sezincote House and Garden and Bourton House Garden.
The two together was unanimously voted a wonderful day out.
Bourton House Garden was small but lovely, with lots of different areas all around the house which is not open to the public. A couple of hours is plenty to see it all and have a coffee and cake or light lunch in the barn cafe.
Bourton House Garden features luxuriant terraces and wide herbaceous borders with stunning plant, texture and colour combinations.
Features include a topiary walk, a White Garden and several spring-fed water features including a raised basket pond from the Great Exhibition of 1851.
You will also find a Shade House, colourful borders with unusual tender perennials and many creatively planted pots. A raised 18th century walk provides an enticing visual link to the Cotswold landscape beyond.
Sezincote was a very different but fascinating place to visit, only a mile away from Bourton House. The house has several rooms open to visit and is very different to many of the other large country houses open to visit
There is a weathered-copper onion dome straight out of India. The south front, complete with curving orangery, unfurls above a Repton landscape. The garden is blessed by a series of spring-fed pools, connected by gurgling water which eventually tumbles into the Island Pool in the valley bottom, before joining the River Evenlode below. The garden includes the canals and Irish yews in the South Garden, evocative of Moghul paradise gardens, a curving conservatory, home to many tender climbing plants, and little pavilion also in Indian style, and fine planting of the water garden, where many rare plants can be seen. Streams and pools are lined with great clumps of bog-loving plants and the stream is crossed by an Indian bridge adorned with Brahmin bulls. Ornaments include a temple to Surya the sun god, and a snake coiled around a column in the Snake Pond.
The Orangery Tearoom serves tea, coffee and cake including gluten free options, but not lunch.
Both venues are in the Cotwolds and also very close to Batsford Arboretum.
Breezy Knees Gardens, York
If you were at the May meeting where Don Witton gave his excellent and amusing presentation on ‘Once Seen Never Forgotten’, you too may have been interested in hearing about Breezy Knees Garden near York.
We happened to be spending a few days in Flamborough, Yorkshire the following week and by altering our route home only slightly managed to fit in a visit to this fascinating garden.
Quirky is the word which comes immediately to mind, interesting and unusual also fit the bill. We spent several hours there and it was nowhere near enough, we had to rush to get our delicious cream tea in before closing time. (The café, visited several times during our time there) was excellent and unlike so many places stayed open almost until the gardens closed. There was a superb nursery too, for once selling many of the plants we saw around the gardens instead of the same as every Garden Centre in the country and prices weren’t too expensive either!
It was quite a long walk along ‘The Rabbit Path’ to the garden proper and they do try to keep the rabbits out! A splendid gate allowed you in to start on a circuit of the garden rooms, which seemed to get bigger and bigger as we went on. They had some lovely names such as Stonehedge, a version of Stonehenge made up of pillars of clipped beech, and plenty big enough to lose yourself in. A June Garden a May Garden, a September Garden, Rock Garden, Pond and Shade Garden, Cottage Garden and many more, 20 in all. There was a garden with fountains in which started up every 4 minutes and performed for 2 minutes with different patterns and comfortable seats to sit and watch from too.
There was a 15 foot sculpture of a pair of wellington boots in one garden and a matching 15 foot trowel in another. Lots of metal sculptures and other interesting features all around.
One place I was determined to see before we left was ‘The Rogues Gallery’, I could not imagine for the life of me what would be in there. It turned out to be an area planted up with all those thugs of plants you planted because they looked so nice but then wished you hadn’t because they take over your garden, we have quite a few of those ourselves! Their sign read’ Rogues Gallery, so called because all the plants here, whilst attractive, are very invasive and if planted in normal borders would soon swamp everything around them. However, hopefully here they will meet their match – their neighbours may be even bigger thugs than they are!’ Love it! We must go back and see who wins.
The garden was started on arable farmland in 1999 and was planted first with a framework of trees, hedges and shrub athamanta turbiths and then as those began to provide some shelter work began on the borders and garden rooms and is still ongoing. It is called Breezy Knees because it is very exposed “and if you stood there in January, you wouldn’t ask why it was called that!” It is only open from May through to September for that reason. It is one of only a handful of British gardens with a current 5 star Trip Advisor rating and is situated on the eastern outskirts of York, some 5 miles from the city centre.
Thank you Don, for enthusing about it in your talk, and introducing it to us, a place well worth a visit by anyone. But leave plenty of time!!
Sue and Trevor Wray
Reighton Nursery
Also found on our visit to Flamborough Head, only a couple of miles down the road at Reighton Village.
This has to be one of the biggest and best nurseries we've ever visited. It is NOT a garden centre but a nursery with fields full of pots of plants, all very reasonably priced. My favourite area was one labelled Heuchera Heaven and bursting with some of the most flamboyant heucheras I've ever seen.
Be careful you don't get lost or miss anything out, it is like a maze!