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2021 Editor's Choice Hotels with Gardens
Best hotels with gardens in the UK
Congham Hall
King's Lynn
Love herbs? Congham Hall is right up your patch. With 400 varieties, these beautifully laid-out herb gardens are a popular attraction in their own right. A stroll in the early morning or at dusk is a sensual delight for the eye and nose.
Bodysgallen Hall and Spa
Llandudno
The formal gardens here are as aristocratic as the 17th-century house. Wander through the restored parterre and the walled and rose gardens, and admire the lily ponds and follies, before exploring the 200-acre estate.
Gravetye Manor
East Grinstead
These historic gardens were designed by William Robinson, the Irish pioneer of the wild garden, in 1885. His spirit lives on in the romantic flower garden, pergola, kitchen garden, orchard and woodland garden.
Hotel Endsleigh
Tavistock
Humphry Repton’s swan song (his last commission, in 1814), these gardens are as dreamily picturesque as Olga Polizzi’s hotel. Overlooking the Tamar are a formal garden, dell with bridges, arboretum, cottage orné and herbaceous border.
Stoberry House
Wells
Frances and Tim Meeres Young have created a lushly landscaped garden that makes the most of views of Wells Cathedral and Glastonbury Tor. Wildlife ponds, vivid planting, sculptures and night illumination make it a pleasure at all hours.
The Newt in Somerset
Castle Cary
These 800-acre gardens, comprising cultivated and landscaped areas, deer park, wild flower meadows and woodland, are no pleasing add-on to Hadspen House, but the star of the show. A dedicated museum tells the ‘Story of Gardening’.
Longueville Manor
St Saviour
A walk through this 18-acre estate, landscaped by a Victorian clergyman, offers the pleasures of a lake, kitchen garden and woods that are home to red squirrels and woodpeckers. Beyond, country lanes take you into idyllic Jersey scenery.
Hilton Park
Clones
The 600-acre grounds of this glorious
18th-century mansion form one of Ireland’s four accredited wildlife estates, where red squirrels still happily scamper. It has three lakes, a 19th-century parterre, a rose garden and woodlands.
Greywalls
Gullane
These six-acre gardens are attributed to Gertrude Jekyll and one can sense her hand in the elegant Edwardian design, with its promenades, radiating pathways, rooms and vistas, and perfectly placed spots for sun, shade and privacy.
Austwick Hall
Austwick
This restored Italianate garden, set into a hillside, is a delight throughout the year: in winter, admire the drifts of snowdrops in the woodland; in spring, displays of daffodils and bluebells. Art lovers will enjoy the sculpture trail.
2020 Editor's Choice Hotels with Gardens
Best hotels with gardens in the UK
Lindeth Fell
Bowness-on-Windermere
Gardens laid out by unsung Edwardian genius Thomas Mawson surround this B&B overlooking Lake Windermere. Here are Mawson’s trademark terraces, lawns, dry-stone walls, glorious plantings, a private tarn in grounds that melt into the landscape.
Gravetye Manor
East Grinstead
‘In setting a garden, we are painting,’ wrote William Robinson, who owned this Elizabethan manor from 1884. Disdaining Victorian formality, Robinson favoured
a natural style. Discover a wild garden, flower garden, orchard, lake and meadow in 1,000 wooded acres.
Fischer’s at Baslow Hall
Baslow
Five acres of gardens surround this Jacobean-style mansion, with clipped box and yews, cottage garden borders, an arboretum, a kitchen garden. Guests, free to wander, find hidden paths, a pond, a ‘secret’ bridge, specimen trees.
Viewmount House
Longford
Four landscaped acres surround this 17th- century mansion. Guests will discover a Japanese garden with pagoda and wisteria pergola, a blue garden, a white garden with lily pond, an orchard – and a herb garden to supply the kitchen.
Goldstone Hall – Market Drayton
Market Drayton
Come to this Georgian manor house in summer to see the roses. Come at any time to enjoy produce from one of the UK’s largest hotel vegetable gardens, with herb walkway (more than 200 varieties), heritage vegetables and double-tiered herbaceous border.
Grove of Narberth
Narberth
Walking trails thread through 28-acre grounds at this 17th-century-cum- Victorian mansion. Explore four acres of kitchen and walled gardens, terraces, a pond, a stream, an apple orchard and fruit garden, beehives, ancient oaks, mighty beeches.
The Pig near Bath
Pensford
A kitchen garden lies at the heart of every Pig, and this Georgian manor with deer park has the largest, with smokehouse, glasshouse, wild-flower orchard, fruit cages and hives. Enjoy home-grown produce
in the Conservatory, spa treatments in a ‘potting shed’.
Greywalls
Gullane
An Arts and Crafts ‘golf box’ designed by Edwin Lutyens stands in gardens attributed to Gertrude Jekyll, with arched gateways in high walls framing views, a sunken croquet lawn, a lavender border, a ha-ha beside Muirfield golf course.
Boath House
Nairn
You can eat alfresco at the café in the walled garden of this Georgian mansion in parkland. Hens, hives, orchard, potager, glass houses and herb parterres supply the kitchen. Herbaceous borders supply flowers, the lake is stocked with trout.
The Salutation
Sandwich
‘Lutyens’s most intricate Wrenaissance house and garden ensemble’, this red brick mansion overlooks 3.7 acres of walled gardens for all seasons, a plant-lover’s paradise painstakingly restored and home to a summer opera festival.
From £90 per night
2019 Editor's Choice Hotels with Gardens
Best hotels with gardens in the UK
Congham Hall
King's Lynn
With more than 400 varieties of herbs, the herb garden at this Georgian country house is a great attraction for students
of all things culinary and physic, while supplying kitchen and spa. Best experienced with the heady aromas found at dawn or dusk.
Hambleton Hall
Oakham
The owners of this former hunting lodge have created a glorious patchwork on 17 south-facing acres, with a parterre, ornamental ponds, mature trees, statues and topiary, bordering Rutland Water. Lovely in all seasons.
Bodysgallen Hall and Spa
Llandudno
Guests can wander more than 200 acres of parkland, pleasure grounds and gardens at this Jacobean manor house. Garden tours take in a rare 17th-century box parterre. There are woodland walks, a lily pond, a cascade, specimen trees, a prolific walled kitchen garden.
Cliveden House
Taplow
Sir Charles Barry’s Italianate mansion overlooking the Thames stands amid pleasure grounds, with a yew maze, rose garden, a Japanese water garden, a parterre laid out by John Fleming, pioneer of ‘carpet bedding’ – and Britain’s most notorious swimming pool.
Goldstone Hall – Market Drayton
Market Drayton
One of the UK’s largest hotel kitchen gardens, reclaimed from wilderness, supplies the kitchen with a wealth of produce at this Georgian manor house. There is a herb walkway, a walled garden with double-tiered herbaceous border, a riot of colour all summer long.
Hotel Endsleigh
Tavistock
Olga Polizzi’s ducal fishing lodge stands in an 18th-century arcadia laid out by Humphry Repton, with the River Tamar running through. Discover streams, pools, cascades, ravines, a shell house and grotto, and one of England’s longest herbaceous borders.
Longueville Manor
St Saviour
From 1863, the Rev Christian (aka WB) Bateman landscaped the grounds around this ancient manor house, with lake, specimen trees, kitchen garden. They remain much as he designed them – though with the addition of a pool, jogging trails and spa.
Hilton Park
Clones
Oaks grown from acorns planted in 1752 to commemorate an ancestor’s marriage, champion beeches, a kitchen garden and a rose garden created by Victorian landscaper Ninian Niven, can all be found in the park and pleasure grounds of this very special stately home.
Boath House
Nairn
An ornamental trout lake, wildflower meadow, streams and formal plantings surround this Georgian mansion. The walled garden supplies organic fruit and vegetables for the table; bees and hens do their bit for breakfast.
The Salutation
Sandwich
The ‘Secret Garden’, laid out by Lutyens, architect of this Queen Anne-style house, is revealed to the paying public and hotel residents. Designed as a series of ‘rooms’, the walled garden includes a poplar, holm oak and meadow walk, wet meadow, tropical and jungle garden.
From £90 per night
2018 Editor's Choice Hotels with Gardens
Best hotels with gardens in the UK
Lindeth Fell
Bowness-on-Windermere
With glorious views of Windermere and seven acres of spectacular grounds, this guest house feels more like a country house hotel, complete with wood panelling and ornate ceilings.
Talland Bay Hotel
Talland-by-Looe
It feels a bit as if you’ve fallen down Alice’s rabbit hole, at this whimsical, dog-friendly hotel with a ‘spectacular bay setting’ by the Coast Path.
Bodysgallen Hall and Spa
Llandudno
Set in 220 acres of parkland, this antique-filled Elizabethan mansion has plenty to impress, from the oak-panelled hall and 13th-century tower to the modern spa and ‘lovely’ gardens.
Lords of the Manor
Upper Slaughter
This 17th-century manor house of honeyed Cotswold stone looks every bit the smart country house hotel.
Askham Hall
Penrith
It may have a medieval pele tower, a 17th-century topiary garden, and now a Michelin-starred restaurant, but Charles Lowther’s ancestral pile also has an unpretentious, relaxed atmosphere.
Hotel Endsleigh
Tavistock
‘It’s hard to fathom just how many things the Endsleigh does right,’ says one reader, of this Grade I listed hotel set in 200 acres of fairy-tale gardens in the Tamar valley.
Douneside House – Tarland
Tarland
The feeling of a family home pervades this hotel in brimming gardens on the edge of the Cairngorms national park.
Boath House
Nairn
Hotel grounds don’t get much more ‘exquisite’ than at Don and Wendy Matheson’s ‘beautiful if unadorned’ Georgian mansion, sitting amid 22 acres of lawns, meadows and woodland.
Barnsley House
Cirencester
The late Rosemary Verey, doyenne of the 20th-century English country garden, created the flourishing grounds at this 17th-century Cotswold stone mansion, her home from the late 1950s.
Millgate House
Richmond
This outwardly modest-looking Regency town house startles first-time visitors when they enter.
2017 Editor's Choice Gardens
Best hotels with gardens in the UK
Lindeth Fell
Bowness-on-Windermere
With glorious views of Windermere and seven acres of spectacular grounds, this guest house feels more like a country house hotel, complete with wood panelling and ornate ceilings.
Talland Bay Hotel
Talland-by-Looe
It feels a bit as if you’ve fallen down Alice’s rabbit hole, at this whimsical, dog-friendly hotel with a ‘spectacular bay setting’ by the Coast Path.
Middlethorpe Hall & Spa
York
Overlooking the racecourse and surrounded by gardens and parkland, this gem of a William and Mary house with its ‘stunning exterior’ feels deeply rural yet is just over a mile from York.
Ballyvolane House
Fermoy
A house-party atmosphere prevails at Jenny and Justin Green’s Italianate mansion set amid romantic gardens and parkland.
Goldstone Hall – Market Drayton
Market Drayton
A vast, prolific kitchen garden is the perennial glory of John and Sue Cushing’s red brick Georgian manor house in flower-filled acres amid gentle countryside.
Hotel Endsleigh
Tavistock
‘It’s hard to fathom just how many things the Endsleigh does right,’ says one reader, of this Grade I listed hotel set in 200 acres of fairy-tale gardens in the Tamar valley.
Grove of Narberth
Narberth
Jacobean splendour meets Arts and Crafts elegance at this gleaming white hotel, set in a leafy glade outside one of Pembrokeshire’s prettiest market towns.
Barnsley House
Cirencester
The late Rosemary Verey, doyenne of the 20th-century English country garden, created the flourishing grounds at this 17th-century Cotswold stone mansion, her home from the late 1950s.
Austwick Hall
Austwick
From the grand entrance hall with its flamboyant staircase to the antique-furnished bedrooms and Italianate garden, this country house B&B adds an exotic touch to a Yorkshire Dales village.
Millgate House
Richmond
This outwardly modest-looking Regency town house startles first-time visitors when they enter.
2016 Editor's Choice Gardens
Best hotels with gardens in the UK
Gravetye Manor
East Grinstead
Jeremy and Elizabeth Hosking’s beloved and beautiful Elizabethan manor house stands in glorious gardens, amid 1,000 acres of woodland.
Lime Wood
Lyndhurst
Designed for pure leisure and pleasure, this Georgian New Forest lodge is run as a glamorous yet relaxed country house hotel for today’s savvy guest.
Glenapp Castle
Ballantrae
With sweeping views of Ailsa Craig and the Mull of Kintyre, Paul and Poppy Szkiler’s Scottish Baronial-style castle hotel balances a ‘stunning, grand building’ with ‘relaxed luxury’.
Stone House
Rushlake Green
Stone House closed down at the end of January 2018.