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Please check with garden owners or their website to confirm current dates open
19 Mar - 26 Jun, 10 - 6, Sat - Wed
27 Jun - 28 Aug, 10 - 6, Sun - Sat
29 Aug - 2 Oct, 10 - 6, Sat - Wed
3 Oct - 30 Oct, 10 - 5, Sat - Wed
31 Oct - 18 Dec, 11-4, Sat - Wed
Open Good Fri. Last admission 1hr before closing
As the number of coaches is limited per day, group organisers should pre-book their visit in advance
by written appointment.
Saturday 16 July 2010. All proceeds from garden admission tickets will go to the NGS
Adult £10, child £5, family £25. Groups £8.50.
The garden is less busy after 3pm. Disabled access to one third of garden due to the location of informal and uneven pathways and steps.
Celebrated 20th-century garden in the beautiful north Cotswolds; One of England's greatest gardens, an Arts & Crafts masterpiece; Series of outdoor rooms each with its own unique character; Old roses, unusual plants and trees from around the world; Nestled in the Cotswolds with stunning panoramas across the Vale of Evesham
Holly House, Chipping Camden
Howard Arms, Ilmington Fleece Inn, Bretforton
The great innovation, so triumphantly executed at Hidcote, is to bring the experience of the vast traditional English country house gardens with their extensive plantings over a wide area into an intimate human-scale garden of about ten acres. Lawrence Johnston achieved this by creating a series of 'rooms', each with beautifully arranged content providing surprises at every turn. Not so surprisingly it has been widely copied. There is so much to see here that a mere list of the numerous compartments and their incredible range of rare and interesting plants, some of which carry the Hidcote name, would be tedious and could never do justice to the thrill of seeing the real thing. This is without question the most influential garden of the 20th century and is at its core a plantsman's garden, echoing Vita Sackville-West's depiction of Johnston as a botanist and plant hunter, though few if any of his horticultural peers have had have had the skill to display their results with such finesse.
The garden at Hidcote was started by Lawrence Johnston who arrived at Hidcote with his mother in 1907 and developed it himself from exposed farmland, gradually enclosing the surrounding pastures as he went. To augment the collection, Lawrence Johnston took part in two major plant hunting expeditions with George Forrest to China and with 'Cherry' Ingram to South Africa. In planting the garden he was assisted by his friend Norah Lindsay and indeed had intended to leave Hidcote to her when he departed to live permanently in the South of France. There at Serre de la Madonne, near Menton, he created another famous garden, but sadly Norah Lindsay died in 1945. Hidcote was therefore acquired by the National Trust in 1948 which has striven ever since to retain the spirit and content of the original garden.