Your last chance to discover Winchelsea’s secret gardens
It’s a very rare privilege indeed to be allowed within the high walls of Winchelsea’s 10 secret gardens.
Which explains why these wonderful private retreats are collectively the most popular of all the hundreds in the National Gardens Scheme’s gardens open for charity events.
The Well House, The Armoury, Cleveland House and the rest are opened by their owners on just two or three afternoons a year. This Wednesday, July 4, offers your last chance to visit them in 2012. The gardens are open from 1.00 until 5.30 and you pay your £5 entrance fee to all of them at the first you visit. Follow signs in the village.
Here is just a taste of what you can expect, with pictures taken during a visit on June 30.
The Well House’s partially walled garden was recently renovated, using gravel and raised beds as well as lawn, with existing trees that aim at all-year-round interest. Here are some details…
Great colour and form:
Wonderful planting in miniature:
The tortoise and the sun dial:
Even the slug damage looks well designed here:
The Armoury’s one acre of land is divided into 10 contrasting garden rooms, with numerous water features and seating areas.
There’s the woodland glade, complete with urn:
Water features:
A garden with a sense of fun:
Cleveland House is perhaps the most impressive of all the gardens. It’s 1.3 walled acres offer remarkable variety, with a wild flower meadow, summer houses, ponds, and a grand lawn with obelisk and water feature giving spectacular views across Rye Bay.
The wildflower meadow:
The pond:
