Kitchen Garden
The recently created Kitchen Garden is located behind the Orangery and consists of an orchard newly planted with historic Yorkshire apple trees, vegetable patches, a herbaceous border and bright flowers planted to attract pollenating insects.
The vegetables grown are true to those available in the 1700s and 1800s, including onions, lettuce, tomatoes and 19 varieties of rhubarb. Mark, the Kitchen Gardener, nurtures and harvests the produce to be used by the food and beverage team in the dishes you’ll find in the Courtyard Café. As you enjoy the scents and colours of this varied garden, don’t miss the 100 metre stretch of white flowering iceberg roses.
Menagerie Garden
If you follow the winding paths beyond the Middle Lake, you’ll find the secluded Menagerie Garden, created in 1743. The Menagerie House, designed by Robert Adam, was once home to exotic species, from monkeys and colourful birds to lions. In fact a recently discovered poster from 1812 boasts that Nostell’s ‘black-eyed lioness’ featured in a fair held in the local town, Pontefract. The story goes that once the clock struck 4pm each day, she became completely unmanageable!
As you enter the garden through the gothic arch, look out for roosting bats at dusk and marvel at the great Holm Oak with it’s knarled trunk, which is home to a variety of birds, bugs and creepy crawlies.
