PRESS RELEASE: Beautiful Kent gardens to visit this June, filled with rose bowers and summer flowers.
June is the peak month for garden visiting, with over q50 open garden days here in Kent for the National Garden Scheme. It’s a time when the English garden is in full bloom and the heady scent of roses floats on warm summer breezes.
Here a just a few of the charming gardens opening this June, all with abundant roses to delight the garden visitor. Many of our open gardens offer delicious homemade treats too, giving you time to sit and enjoy a summer’s day out in our beautiful county.
Please visit the website to search for a garden open near to you: Kent NGS open gardens
Pett Place
is new to the National Garden Scheme this year, and is a wonderfully romantic walled garden covering nearly four acres, filled with secret places and pleasing vistas. There is an idyllic rose garden, and wildly romantic planting throughout. Remains of a ruined medieval chapel is a charming feature beside the manor house, which was re-fronted in c.1700 and which Pevsner describes as ‘presenting grandiloquently towards the road’.
Pett Place, Pett Lane, Charing, Ashford, TN27 0DS
Open Days: Thursday 8 June & Friday 9 June, 11am – 4pm
Accessibility: Unfortunately there is no wheelchair access due to steps and steep bank.
Refreshments: Home-made teas
Admission: Adult: £7.50 Child: Free. Plants for sale.
Lords
is an C18 walled garden filled with glorious delights. There is a flowery meadow under apples, pears, quince, crab apple and medlar, as well as a cherry orchard that’s grazed by Jacob sheep. The Mediterranean terrace has a citrus standing, while beautifully pleached hornbeams, clipped yew hedges and a 120 ft. high tulip tree all add to the wonderful garden structure. Fruit, vegetables, herbs and salads are grown here too, with new exciting sculpture to see this year.
Lords, Sheldwich, Faversham, ME13 0NJ
Open Day: Sunday 11 June, 2pm – 5pm
Accessibility: There are some gravel paths
Refreshments: Home-made teas
Admission: Adult: £6.00 Child: Free.
Downs Court
is a three-acre downland garden on alkaline soil with fine trees, mature yew and box hedges, a small parterre and bountiful mixed borders with many unusual plants. For rose lovers, there are many shrub roses to enjoy and a glorious rose arch pathway. Sweeping lawns give way to lovely views over the surrounding countryside.
Downs Court, Church Lane, Boughton Aluph, Ashford, TN25 4EU
June Open Days: Sunday 11 June & Sunday 18 June, 2pm – 5pm
Accessibility: Wheelchair access
Admission: Adult: £5.00 Child: Free.
Old Bladbean Stud
has a dedicated walled rose garden where you can lose yourself among the 90+ old fashioned rose varieties. It is one of five interlinked gardens that also include a tranquil yellow and white garden, a square garden with a tapestry of self-sowing perennials with a Victorian style greenhouse, extraordinary and immaculate 300ft long colour schemed symmetrical double borders, and an organic fruit garden. Rachel de Thame visited this fabulous garden for ‘Gardeners’ World’ last year.
Old Bladbean Stud, Bladbean, Canterbury, CT4 6NA
June Open Days: Sunday 11 June & Sunday 25 June, 2pm – 6pm. Please see website for other open days, including July.
Refreshments: Cream teas
Admission: Adult: £6.00 Child: Free. Plants & seeds for sale.
Smiths Hall
is a delightful three-acre garden surrounding a 1719 Queen Anne House, where the garden layout follows that of the C18 original. Lose yourself in the numerous themed rooms of this wonderful varied garden with its sunken garden with ornamental pond, colourful iris beds, scented old-fashioned rose walk, formal rose garden, peony walk, colourful herbaceous borders, wild flower meadow, varied shrub borders and selection of specimen trees and topiary. Then follow the avenue of trees to the woodland walk and nine-acre park stocked with a huge variety of young native and American specimen trees, then take the meandering walk around the meadow with stunning views back to the house and across the surrounding Kent countryside. You can then relax and enjoy teas and home-made cakes by the pool. The garden has ongoing projects to improve the floral displays and bring underutilised areas back to life over the coming years.
Smiths Hall, Lower Road, West Farleigh, ME15 0PE
Open Day: Sunday 25 June, 11am – 5pm
Accessibility: Some gravel paths
Refreshments: Home-made teas by the pool
Admission: Adult: £5.00 Child: Free. Dogs on short leads welcome.
Tudeley House
is a town garden that is being restored by its current owners, employing Jo Thompson, the recipient of four RHS Chelsea Gold medals, to bring the garden up to date whilst remaining sympathetic to the Victorian era. It has the typical look and feel you’d expect from a Victorian garden, but with a wonderful surprise in store beyond the first section of landscaping and planting. There are 50 David Austin roses planted in the section close to the house. Phase one and two, of three sections being restored, is completed. Garden design plans will be on display to see what is being re-created in the garden.
Tudeley House, Royal Parade, Chislehurst, BR7 6NW
Open Day: Sunday 25 June, 11am – 4pm
Accessibility: The garden is 95% flat. Some older paths (25% of garden) are narrow, so may be difficult for large mobility scooters.
Refreshments: Home-made teas
Admission: Adult: £4.00 Child: Free. Plants for sale.
About the National Garden Scheme
The National Garden Scheme gives visitors unique, affordable access to over 3,500 exceptional private gardens and raises impressive amounts of money for nursing and health charities through admissions, teas and cake.
Thanks to the generosity of garden owners, volunteers and visitors we have donated over £65 million to nursing and health charities. Founded in 1927 to support district nurses, we are now the most significant charitable funder of nursing in the UK and our beneficiaries include Macmillan Cancer Support, Marie Curie, Hospice UK and The Queen’s Nursing Institute.
The National Garden Scheme doesn’t just open beautiful gardens for charity – we are passionate about the physical and mental health benefits of gardens too. We fund projects which promote gardens and gardening as therapy, and in 2017, we launched our annual Gardens and Health Week to raise awareness of the topic.
To find your perfect garden, visit ngs.org.uk, download the National Garden Scheme app or purchase the National Garden Scheme’s Garden Visitor’s Handbook, which is published annually and available via ngs.org.uk/shop and at all good book retailers.
