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1st Feb - 31st Oct; Wed - Sun & Bank Holiday Mondays; 10am - 5pm;
January-February Spring Summer & Autumn
Snowdrops Spring blossom Roses and herbaceous plants, Autumn foliage
Adult £4.50; Child £2.50; Over 60s & Groups £4.
The Plant Centre has been taken over by Kevin Hughes who specialise in unusual plants. The tea rooms will be serving light, home-made lunches and teas.
Compasses Inn
Compasses Inn, Lower Chicksgrove
Visiting this eight-acre garden is like discovering little pockets of surprise and interest among the muddle and overcrowded arrangements of flowers and shrubs that fill and overspill the beds. In the lower part of the garden there is a tunnel theme with a variety of climbing plants grown up larch or ash poles and trained across the paths. Vitis coignetiae fight it out with wine berry, jasminum aureum and the rose 'Felicite et Perpetue', while on one side of the lower tunnel, Vitis purpura competes with that unsurpassable old rose, 'Easlea's Golden rambler'.
The north-east corner of the garden, which is based on plans drawn up for Hon. Louis Greville by Harold Peto in 1910, was planted in the style of that time with very formal herbaceous plants and a tunnel of figs.
The garden has a fish pond and boat terrace which faces a little waterfall from one water carrier to the other. The gardens are peaceful and give interesting focal points as well as colour to the visitors.
The original building is the western end of the house and was completed by Sir William Greene for his daughter and son-in-law in 1553 as a wedding present. Charles II hid there for six nights while waiting for a ship to arrive at Shoreham. After a fire in 1835, the Hon. Louis Greville, great-uncle of the present owner rebuilt all except the surviving SW wing.
In 1996 Guy Rasch married Frances Hulse and this private family garden entered another phase. This unique and wonderful legacy was created by Lady Anne Rasch during the last 35 years until she died in 1995. Frances, having the benefit of some notable gardeners in her own family, has determined to bring a new perspective to the garden introducing modern design, colour and style.