Tour of the Gardens

Tour of the Gardens at Arley by Jane Foster

Over the last 20 years I have visited many of the most outstanding gardens in Britain.  When admiring these gardens I have often pondered on what it is that makes Arley so special.  For me I think what contributes its special character and distinction is the very strong design – the ‘bones of the garden’ - to use my mother’s phrase.  This has come about over the centuries as a result of gradual inspired developments by my ancestors.  I would particularly like to mention the the elegantly landscaped Park, which has always been seen as an essential backdrop to the garden, almost reminiscent of the Japanese idea of ‘borrowed scenery’.  Many long vistas in the garden end in magnificent views of the park, which for me provide a marvellous feeling of spaciousness, often not to be found in the many wonderful gardens created in the 20th Century.
I would like to encourage you to come here and see it for yourself, but I will now take you on a virtual tour, telling you about some of the most interesting and attractive things that you will see.

1. The Pleached Lime Avenue
You will approach the Hall and Gardens at Arley by walking along the magnificent Pleached Lime Avenue.  These trees, planted in the 1850s, have been clipped to form a giant hedge on stilts, 8m high.  Since they have been clipped every year they have never reached maturity (never producing flowers and fruit) with the result that the trunks are still the size of a tree of about 20 years old.

2. The Clock Tower and The Ride
Just beyond the old cobbled Stable Yard, on the right of the archway, is the large medieval cruck barn, known as The Ride since it was used as an indoor riding school in the 19th century.  It was built from giant oak trunks in 1471, contemporary with the first Arley Hall.  In the 19th century, in order to allow a new road to pass through, one bay of this barn was opened up by Rowland Egerton-Warburton, my great, great grandfather, and surmounted with the famous Arley Clock Tower.  The clock is 19th century, but Rowland removed one hand so as to make it look much older, possibly even contemporary with the barn, so that now it only points to the hour.  However it keeps excellent time & the sonorous bell can be heard from all over the Garden.

3. The Flag Garden                                                         

Walking down towards the house you enter the Garden beside the Flag Garden.  This secluded, paved area was created by Antoinette Egerton-Warburton, my great grand-mother, in 1902 as a cosy place for her to sit with her children and her friends.  A selection of hynrid tea and floribunda roses in beds edged with lavender surround a small statue in the centre.  In spring clematis alpina ‘Maidwell Hall’ covers pillars with its showy double blue bells, followed by varieties of clematis texensis and vitivcella.  Throughout the summer abutilon x milleri covers one end of the south facing wall with its delightful orange and black bell flowers and on the east facing wall is a large, striking and unusual climber, schizophragma hydrangeoides ‘Roseum’, rather like a pink form of climbing hydrangea.

4. The Furlong Walk                                                                                        

Leaving the Flag Garden you walk along the path lined with ancient yew hedges to the Furlong Walk.  This path, so called because it is exactly 220 yards long, was built on the site of an earlier road to the Hall.  Rowland was blind for the last 20 years of his life and he used to take his exercise walking up and down this path.  It now forms the SW boundary of the garden with a low wall built on top of the ‘Ha-Ha’.

5. The Herbaceous Border

Half way along the Furlong Walk the planting on the right opens up to provide your first view of the famous double Herbaceous Border, with the Alcove built about 1790 at the far end, the first such border to have been made in England.  The four pairs of beds are backed on one side by an eighteenth century wall and on the other by a yew hedge planted in the 19th Century.  Between the beds are handsome yew finials designed by Rowland Egerton-Warburton and planted in 1856.  The planting in the Border is now carefully controlled to include only cool colours in the first part of the summer, with hotter colours coming in later on.  In May, before the main body of perennials flower, there is a striking combination of large purple alliums, surrounded by burgeoning clumps of greenery, and backed by magnificent specimens of evergreen Ceanothus on the south-facing wall.  With the exception of small bushes of the purple leaved berberis ‘Atropurpurea Nana’ no shrubs are included.  Walk along to the Alcove to see the identification photos of some of the plants, then turn round to enjoy the lovely view along the Border towards the Park.

6. The Ilex Avenue
This unique feature consists of seven pairs of the evergreen oak, quercus ilex, clipped into enormous cylinders, marching like giant soldiers across the garden.   Eight metres high and 3m in diameter, they were planted by Rowland Egerton-Warburton in the1850s. Clipping them every August is quite a challenge for the garden staff!

7. The Tea Cottage and the Shrub Rose Garden
As you walk from the Herbaceous Border towards the Ilex Avenue you see on your left a pretty little half-timbered cottage, built in the mid 19th century, as a place for the family to enjoy afternoon tea.  In the 1960s my mother became captivated by the charms of the old shrub roses which she planted in large beds around the Tea Cottage.  There is now a collection of some 30 or 40 varieties, complimented by tall perennials such as crambe cordifolia, hollyhocks, verbascums, white foxgloves and the beautiful spires of eremurus.

8. The Fish Garden
This small garden, originally part of a bowling green, was created in the 1920s by Lettice Waters, my grandmother, and reflects the fashionable tastes of that time for sunken gardens.  Low bedding plants and the delightful furry, blue-grey mounds of chamaecyparis pisifera 'Boulevard' surround a small pond.  The garden is edged with a low wall on which are growing many sun-loving plants, including Angel’s Fishing Rods (dierama pulcherrimum) with their graceful arching stems of deep pink bells.

13. The Kitchen Garden and Arbour Walk 

The path from the Walled Garden then crosses the Kitchen Garden, where vegetables are grown in beds behind a walk edged with sweet smelling rosa rugosa, under planted with tulips and hardy cyclamen.  Metal arches in the shape of the brick archways at either end support clematis and other climbers.  Halfway along the Rose Walk is the Malus Seat, a bench enclosed by a curved arch of clipped Malus trees, covered in spring with masses of pinky white flowers and in autumn with the delightful small  crab apples.                                       

My sister-in-law, Zoe Ashbrook, designed the Arbour Walk and the vegetable garden behind from 1990 onwards.  Opposite the Malus Seat a delicate white painted wirework arbour, brought here from my father’s old family home in Ireland.  This delightful folly, decorated with urns and pinnacles, has a fairy tale nature, as though it was made of spun icing sugar.  Massive cardoons are planted in the borders lining the path, their strong architectural shapes a complete contrast to the Arbour.  Drifts of tulips and wall-flowers provide bright jewel-like colour in spring, giving way later on to the softer shapes and colours of peonies and irises.  In late summer there is a riot of tender and half hardy annuals and perennials, chosen for their light airy nature echoing the delicate frothy structure of the Arbour.

14.  The Vinery        

 On the North side of the Kitchen Garden is the magnificent Victorian Vinery, 28 metres long.  Inside are fig trees as old as the building itself and a selection of tender plants such as olive, tibouchina, plumbago and ginger plants with their lovely showy flowers in late summer. Opposite the eastern end of the building, clianthus puniceus grows on a sunny sheltered wall, producing its dramatic red flowers, like huge lobster claws, in May-June.

15.  The Herb Garden and The Scented Garden

As you leave the Kitchen Garden, a gap in the yew hedge on your right leads to these two small gardens, both designed by my mother in about 1960.  In the first, a variety of herbs surround a stone finial, whose shape is echoed in the clipped box.  In the Scented Garden are a number of small shrubs and perennials with strongly scented flowers including smilacina racemosa, a lovely perennial resembling a fluffy version of ‘Solomon’s Seal’, and some beautiful specimens of euphorbia mellifera, a handsome evergreen which produces in May masses of orangey brown flowers smelling strongly of honey.

16.  The Grove
On the east side of the hall, beyond the Chapel, my brother, Lord Ashbrook, has developed a large woodland garden over the thirty years or so.  There is a large collection of specie and hybrid rhododendrons and azaleas which with daffodils and narcissus in variety give a spectacular show in April and May. In addition, there are rich planting of acer, sorbus, birch, magnolia, camellia, malus, viburmums, euonymus, cornus, prunus and many other trees and shrubs which makes it one of the most beautiful and interesting woodland gardens in the North West. Altogether the Grove presents a delightful contrast to the more formal gardens established earlier. The display in spring and early summer of flowering shrubs under the dappled shade of mature native hardwoods is particularly striking, but at all seasons of the year there is colour and interest. Beyond it is a Woodland Walk which takes the visitor through largely natural undisturbed woodland interspersed with plantings of exotic trees and shrubs..