Enjoy the garden at Packwood

Packwood’s contemporary mingled style garden, with herbaceous borders, wildflower meadows and beautiful orchard is the perfect place to dream of carefree days. The gardens are noted for their exciting and colourful borders, unusual plants, bountiful Kitchen Garden and magnificent yew trees.

Summer is a wonderful time at Packwood with plenty of interest throughout. 

The star of the show during June are the Digitalis, better known as foxgloves. With the raised terrace and yew garden beyond this is the perfect spot for budding photographers.

In the raised terrace borders our most asked about plant is the North African Cabbage Trees which re-appear after a long winter sleep in our warm poly tunnels. The glossy black rosettes get bigger and blacker as the summer progresses. They are planted in the soil and not ‘plunged in their pots’, so their roots get all close up and intimate with the red worms and beneficial soil bacteria, which is why, we believe, they grow so big!

The Yew Garden

Follow the spiral path to get the best view of Packwood's famous Yew Garden. According to legend the yew trees at Packwood represent the ‘Sermon on the Mount’ and are over 350 years old. We have started a phased programme of rejuvenation to secure the future of this ancient and iconic topiary garden.  

The Yew Gardens here at Packwood are very fragile and sometimes have to be closed to protect them. Please call the property before you visit to avoid disappointment.

Outdoor tapestries

A spectacular array of flowers adorn the borders at Packwood, creating a wonderfully rich feast for the eyes - the perfect accompaniment to the beautiful tapestries inside. Packwood's flamboyant flower borders, renowned for their distinctive ‘mingled’ style has evolved through the hands of successive head gardeners. This ‘mingled’ style, which is labour intensive and requires a high level of skill, consists of small groups or single plants being repeated at intervals along the border creating a vivid tapestry of plants crammed closely together.

The Kitchen Garden

The current Kitchen Garden owes much to the vision of the gardening team and a band of dedicated volunteers. Vegetables are planted in rows in beds around a central circular pool. Traditional rotation of crops is observed for best results and the produce is often to be found on the menu of Packwood’s café.

Discover more about the kitchen garden at Packwood

Summer highlights

On the house walls don't miss the sweetly scented wisteria which are usually flowering prolifically during June. Irises are abundant in every corner of the garden whether by the lakeside edge as the common ‘Yellow flag Iris’ or the delicate dusky blue of 'Iris Siberica' in the ornamental borders. A particularly nice variety of this is the ‘Silver Edge’ iris coming a little later, but definitely worth the wait!

June is the perfect time to see the roses at Packwood and you'll be spoilt for choice.
Dotted along the walls to the north, either side of the road, are the sweet scented Rosa ‘Paul’s Himalayan Musk’ with its delightful sprays of delicate double pale pink flowers.

Recently the gardeners have created a ‘Rose Walk’ just along our visitor route from our café to the house. The outer walls of the Kitchen garden and nearby hedgerow support a perfusion of semi ornamental single roses in several shades of pink and white. They attract many passing bees and act as cover for wild birds and insects.

In the meadows the mass of buttercups around the orchard and Roman Bath take some beating however, another favourite amoungst our visitors, is the common cow parsley which floats along the length of the causeway bank.
 

Packwood's Tramper

The generous donation of a 'Tramper' from the Patrick Trust earlier this month is currently facilitating full access to Packwood’s park and gardens. Follow the link for more information on the Patrick Trust and how their kind donation is enabling visitors to explore all that Packwood has to offer.

Find out about The Patrick Trust (PDF / 0.3MB) download