Cotswold Gardens - three or six day tour
Tuesday 1^st to Sunday 6^th June

Buscot Park, Oxfordshire

F L O R A Garden Tours visits Hidcote Manor, Kiftsgate Court, Blenheim Palace and Sudeley Castle.

The Cotswold Hills, lying between Birmingham to the North and Oxford to the South, are renowned for their picturesque honey coloured sand-stone villages. Here are some world-class gardens commemorated in the names of famous flower and fruit cultivars such as Blenheim, Hidcote and Kiftsgate .

Many of the gardens we visit have been designed by famous gardeners. Charles, Prince of Wales, bought the Highgrove Estate in 1980 and is still developing it on eco-conscious principles. It holds a national collection of Beeches and Hostas.

The romantic Abbey House Gardens are quite new but set by the ruins of medieval Malmsbury Abbey and include a stretch of river and many different design elements.

Waterperry was a “Ladies’ Horticultural College” in the 1930s run by the redoubtable Beatrix Havergal. The gardens are now expansive and magnificent with a large nursery and shop. It holds a national collection of Kabschia Saxifrages.

In the early 1900s Major Laurence Johnston laid out Hidcote Manor garden in a series of “garden-rooms” each with its own design character. This was the garden which influenced Vita Sackville West as she designed Sissinghurst Castle garden.

Next door is Kiftsgate Court, a charming garden designed and maintained by three generations of women. It incorporates a steep cliff overlooking the Vale of Evesham and is the birthplace and home of the giant rambler rose “Kiftsgate”.

Buscot Park was laid out on a grand scale in the early 1900s by the well known designer Harold Peto, harking back to the great pleasure gardens of the C18 and C19 centuries.

Sezincote house and garden has survived largely unchanged from its Indian inspired origins in the early 1800s. The Prince of Wales, later George IVth visited and was so impressed by the House’s amalgam of Hindu and Moslem architecture that he changed his plans for the Brighton Pavilion. The garden still has five “heritage” trees planted in the original oriental garden.

Of the smaller gardens we visit, Broughton Castle, Bourton House and the Stone House are outstanding in their uniquely different ways.