These gorgeous properties will put a spring in your step.
Hampshire, offers in excess of £4 million
Six-bedroom, Grade II-listed, Tudor The Priory is positioned around an immaculate courtyard knot garden with intricate box hedging and topiary contrasting with 15th-century ruins beyond. Set discreetly off Odiham village high street, near Hook, there are nearly five acres of meticulously cared-for formal gardens, incorporating a large pond to the west with free-roaming ducks and geese and a central weeping willow.
Strutt & Parker (01256 702 892)
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Oxfordshire, £850,000
A sizeable thatched house at the tip of the Cotswolds, near Banbury, Gowers Close looks out through large leaded windows onto a terrace and a landscaped south-facing garden that has featured in several magazines; the vendor is a gardening writer. It has five bedrooms, wisteria, a vine-covered pergola for alfresco dining, shrub borders, lavender, box, yew and a vegetable patch.
Savills (01295 228 000)
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Northumberland, £4.5 million
The twin-turreted treehouse in the three-acre gardens at Springfield House, Corbridge, is an impressive piece of architecture by the same company that built the famous Alnwick Garden treehouse. It connects to the main house via a stone terrace. The principal gardens lie to the south at the front of the six-bedroom Victorian home, where there are open lawns, an all-weather tennis court, rhododendrons and tall evergreen trees.
Sanderson Young (0191–223 3500)
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Cheshire, £3.995 million
Said to be one of the most impressive Arts-and-Crafts houses in the country, Thieves Hollow, near Prestbury, has seven bedrooms and a plant room and sits in 10 acres of beautifully landscaped grounds with southerly views. There’s also a lodge with permission for a swimming pool, gymnasium and games room.
Jackson-Stops & Staff (01625 54 0340)