Many visitors follow the melancholy gaze of the fountain statue beyond the manicured seasonal borders to the kitchen garden and the beautifully clipped-lavender boulevard bordering the vegetable and fruit quadrants.
Those with a keen eye may just spot the tops of exotic banana palms swaying sedately beyond the crescent-shaped hedge.
Kitchen Garden
Nostell’s working kitchen garden is alive with bees and birds mingling with sounds of steel as gardeners plant, tend and harvest more than 100 different crops, many of which are destined for our courtyard cafe and donation stall.
The growing espalier of rare heritage pear trees, bordering the orchard's miandering wildflower paths and peaceful benches, are inspired by original Georgian grand plans by garden designer and author of The Practical Fruit Gardener, Stephen Switzer.
It realises part of Switzer's 1731 blueprint never previously liberated from the drawing board, in part due to a change in fashion towards a more natural landscaping approach, with carefully sourced rare plants nutured in the trust's national nursery.