Spring Garden Ideas – Historic Gardens at Wentworth

We took a trip to the historic gardens at Wentworth for my birthday this year. Now part of the Wentworth Garden Centre, these beautiful gardens were once part of the kitchen gardens and pleasure grounds of the historic Wentworth Woodhouse. Having fallen into disrepair, the gardens have been restored and are now a beautiful place to have a wander. Hopefully you can get some spring garden ideas too, as the gardens looked amazing in April this year!

 

The gardens at Wentworth are being beautifully restored and feature a range of things to see, including a maze, fallow deer, woodland walks, statues, sunken gardens, a huge rockery and a stunning Italianate garden. There is also a huge 75m wisteria walk which is in its early days but will be incredible when mature.

 

 

The yew hedges and cones provide structure and form at this time of year when not much else is flowering. I’m trying to get a similar effect with box and privet in our garden (on a much smaller scale though).

 

This is such a brilliant way to display your succulents or other potted plants. I’ve seen these used for auriculas too!

 

This is a huge rockery which will look amazing when the plants are flowering. It’s filled with geraniums and different types of ferns. I’ll have to have another visit to see how this works through the seasons – my own rockery looks amazing in summer but when the bluebells have finished and smothered everything it always looks pretty drab!

 

 

Flower beds filled with spring bulbs including daffodils and hellebores.

More yew pyramids add structure to the Italian garden and the canal pond gives a lovely reflective quality. The symmetry of the gardens here make me happy!

 

We didn’t get time to go into the maze unfortunately (Holly loves them, I hate them! I once went in a maze with her and chipped my tooth so I don’t have fond memories of them) as it started hailing! We grabbed lunch from the garden centre cafe and I spent what turned out to be Holly’s birthday money on some new plant pots. My birthday is two days before Holly’s and my gran had put some money in my birthday card. It turns out that money was meant to go into Holly’s birthday card but we didn’t find out until afterwards! Oops.

The gardens at Wentworth show you can have colour and interest in the garden all year round. For my own garden, I’ve been inspired to add in more bulbs and maybe try some ferns in the rockery. I hope this has inspired you with some spring garden ideas too!