Eight glorious gardens have been shortlisted for the Historic Houses (HH) Garden of the Year Award 2025 and the public is now invited to vote. Showcasing independently owned gardens, parks and grounds, the awards is in its 41st year and is sponsored by Christie’s.
Among the shortlist is photogenic Hestercombe in Somerset (below), which boasts three centuries of landscape design, with its lakes, temples, combes and woodland, including Georgian and Victorian areas, plus Edwardian formal gardens created by Sir Edwin Lutyens and Gertrude Jekyll, with all the irises, pools and pergolas that entails.
Hestercombe.
Last year, Country Life featured Iford Manor Gardens in Wiltshire, home to the well-known landscape architect Harold Peto at the beginning of the 20th century, and it is highlighted again here. Exemplary restoration at Iford has been ongoing for 60 years by the Cartwright-Hignett family and visitors love its Mediterranean, Byzantine and Japanese influences, with statues, colonnades, rills and ponds on Georgian terraces.
Another imaginative restoration has taken place in the grounds of Gothic shell Lowther Castle in Cumbria, blending Neo-Gothic design with 17th-century formality, Victorian extravagance and one of the UK’s largest adventure playgrounds.
The gardens at Lowther Castle.
Raby Castle’s park and gardens, Co Durham, reopened last summer to much acclaim, after Lord and Lady Barnard commissioned award-winning designer Luciano Giubbilei to reimagine it; the result was ‘ingenious’, with historic brick walls and mature yews blending with mazes and a grass amphitheatre.
Hole Park, Kent.
‘This year’s shortlist shows the variety on show across England’s finest gardens,’ says HH director general Ben Cowell. ‘They range from the historic grandeur of Arundel Castle, West Sussex, to the bluebells and wildflower meadows of Hole Park, Kent… while at Penshurst Place, East Sussex, visitors can enjoy 11 acres of Elizabethan gardens… [and] Wollerton Old Hall, Shropshire, delights with intimate garden rooms and exquisite planting.’ Visit the Historic Houses website for further information and to vote.
Meanwhile, voting for the RHS Partner Garden of the Year opens on April 17. This much younger competition is in its fifth year and there are 231 to choose from, 15 of which are new for 2025. There will be regional as well as overall winners; last year’s victor was Green Island Gardens in Essex, which was lovingly created within woodland destroyed during the 1987 hurricane.
-
17 outstanding homes for sale across Britain, from under £250k to £6.5 million, as seen in Country LifeSomething for every budget in this week's round up of homes across the country that have come to market via Country Life.
-
'We started thinking: if we were going to design a bike for Aston Martin, what would it look like? And then we simply couldn’t stop': Aston's new bike has everything you could ever dream of — except a price tagThe new Aston Martin .1R bicycle, a collaboration with manufacturer J.Laverack, leaves Paul Henderson stirred rather than shaken.
-
'The whole house shook. Everything was white. For four months, it felt as if we were on Mars': The story behind one of Hampshire's most breathtaking gardensWhen Kim Wilkie sculpted a tiered grass amphitheatre behind this 17th-century house, the garden finally settled into place, as Non Morris discovers.
-
Myddleton House: The place that 'will help you learn what true gardening is' is open to everyone, and just 30 minutes from central LondonE. A. Bowles created a horticultural playground in the gardens of Myddleton House that was years ahead of its time, and continues to influence even today. Isabel Bannerman takes a look.
-
Wakehurst: 500 years of history, 2.4 billion seeds, 500 acres of planting, and scientists who might just save us allCharles Quest-Ritson takes a look at the amazing work that's been done to update Wakehurst, Kew's trailblazing outpost in Sussex.
-
A dozen slices of al fresco inspiration from the best designers in BritainAmelia Thorpe shares her pick of the most beautiful outdoor furniture and accessories to help you make the most of summer.
-
'Victorian magnificence skilfully simplified and distilled': A peek at the restoration of Somerleyton Hall gardensRecent works have retained the former theatrical splendours of these gardens near Lowestoft, Suffolk, finds Tilly Ware.
-
Alan Titchmarsh: I've tried every slug control known to man, and these are the only things that have ever worked for meAlan Titchmarsh is as charming, warming and friendly a man as anyone you'll ever meet. Unless, of course, you're a slug... in which case you'll awaken his ruthless side.
-
One of the most spectacular rose gardens in England has come in to bloom two weeks earlyIt's time to head to Mottisfont — come for the roses, stay for the fascinating exhibition shedding new light on the history of this beautiful Hampshire house.
-
The first new botanical gardens to be created in the UK in almost 200 years is celebrating its 25th birthdayThe National Botanic Garden of Wales helped put Carmarthenshire on the map and its Great Glasshouse, designed by modernist architect Sir Norman Foster, was once the largest single-span glasshouse in the world.
