Historical Gardens
To many visitors the division between the 19th-century gardens surrounding the house and the much earlier walled garden near the church seems curious. The cause can be best explained by the movements of the family.

The home of the Herveys from c.1475 to 1700 was Ickworth Hall, a Tudor manor situated close to the church, featured gardens of some ten acres sloping southward from the church. In their place the 1st Earl installed a formal garden, with a canal and summer-house, and a huge walled kitchen garden.

Present Gardens
When, in 1829, the 1st Marquess moved into the recently completed East Wing of the long-awaited mansion, its 180-metre façade offered challenging opportunities for landscaping. Rather than approach a professional garden designer, the Marquis relied instead on the advice of his enthusiastic great-nephew, Charles Ellis, 6th Lord Howard de Walden.

Lord Howard de Walden responded by surrounding the southern front with an appropriately Italianate formal garden. Plantations of evergreens were edged with clipped box hedges, interspersed with walks of pencil cypresses. A long central path from the Rotunda leads, up a flight of steps, to a raised, gently curving terraced walk. The walk, over 120 metres long, is bounded by a low wall and provides wide views over the park and the site of Ickworth Hall.

If this type of garden was unusual for its date, the treatment of the entrance front was to be even more distinctive. Instead of creating a grand vista, the 1st Marquess allowed the dense belt of oaks and cedars originally planted to hide the building works to grow to its full height.

This ‘Building Plantation’ deliberately shielded all views of the house from the north, and gave visitors approaching from the main drive no hint of the surprise to come when they rounded the corner and found themselves confronted by the astonishing bulk of the Rotunda.

Informal Gardens
To the west of the house, he adapted an existing section of ornamental woodland (possibly laid out by Capability Brown in the 1770s as an adjunct to Ickworth Lodge) to create the Albana Walk: a pleasure-ground walk named in honour of his wife, Elizabeth Albana Upton.

The last major element of the garden to be introduced was the Orangery with its adjoining terrace, added when the exterior of the West Wing was finally completed in 1841.

Emulating his grandfather, the 3rd Marquess also created a woodland path named after his wife – Lady Geraldine’s Walk, running along the perimeter of the Building Plantation, laid out c.1870.

Further Information
Gerldine's Walk was exposed during work to clear damage following the 1987 storm. The area is part way through being renovated with a view to improving it for the enjoyment of people with visual impairments, and others with special needs such as wheelchairs users, educational parties, and for the benefit of wildlife conservation.