Visiting the garden at Sizergh

Over the winter, the garden team will be carrying out their usual winter maintenance tasks. Pruning and training roses and other shrubs helps maintain their shape, encourage new growth and continued flowering.

Another big job is pruning Sizergh’s heritage apple collection to maintain its health and productivity. Plus planning out the Kitchen Garden for a productive season and mulching beds and borders with the compost they’ve made to replenish nutrients, suppress weeds and conserve moisture levels.

The team will be pruning topiary in the South Garden and on the Fruit Wall, and they’ll also be planning the seed schedule and planting plans for the year ahead.

The winter walk and wooded Knoll will come alive with snowdrops and aconites in the early part of the year, closely followed by early flowering shrubs such as Daphne and Winter Honeysuckle.

The curious twisted shapes of the 100-year-old Acers can be admired in the Rock Garden along with Hellebores.

Watch our video to find out about the garden at Sizergh (subtitled).

Watch our video to find out about the garden at Sizergh (BSL).

Watch our video to find out about the garden at Sizergh (audio described).

Watch our video to find out about the garden at Sizergh (BSL and subtitled).

Watch our video to find out about the garden at Sizergh.

The Rock Garden was created in the early 20th century and originally planted with acers, conifers and herbaceous perennials. Later on, the garden was further developed and more ferns added. In fact, the garden is home to four national collections of ferns, which can be found in the Stumpery, Rock Garden, Kitchen Garden and orchard.

We recommend viewing the Rock Garden from the bench under the Scots Pine with a cup of coffee. This ancient giant will keep you dry during a light shower or shaded from the sun on a hot day. The mature acers, with their delicately shaped leaves, are another highlight, with their magnificent purple foliage in spring and summer which turns to fiery red and orange in autumn.

The Stumpery opened in 2016 and every spring more than a dozen varieties of miniature daffodils complement the fresh green unfurling fronds of the ferns.

Many of the vegetables and flowers you see in the Kitchen Garden started life in the greenhouse; there’s always a variety of seedlings in there at any one time. The ethos of self-sufficiency has always been important to the Strickland family and continues to be so to this day.

The combinations of vegetables and flowers are not only productive, but also beautiful, culminating in a colourful display.

Just as the Stricklands would have grown fruit and vegetables to be used in their kitchen, today’s produce is supplied directly to the café on a daily basis. You can take a piece of the garden home with you and visit the garden plant donation stall in the Kitchen Garden. Vegetables and fruit are available when they're in season, along with bunches of sweet peas. All have been lovingly grown at Sizergh by the team of dedicated garden staff and volunteers.

You'll find over 65 varieties of apple tree in the orchard, including many northern varieties - experience the cloud like blossom in spring, the carpet of wild meadow under the trees in summer, and ripe fruit in early autumn.

Harvesting begins in August and continues until the end of October, and the harvest is used in the café or offered to visitors to take home in exchange for a small donation.

Surplus fruit and vegetables are donated to Waste into Wellbeing, a local charity that provides meals for the community.

There’s always something blooming in the 50m-long herbaceous border. The tennis court shelter is a quiet spot to look out over the border and lawn. It's on your left as you come through the Kitchen Garden and into the Rock Garden.

The Fruit Wall measures 60m and is built from limestone, faced with red brick to absorb the sun’s heat, which helps to ripen the fruit. The apsidal niche at the end of the wall is an ornate sheltered spot that gives great views of the Solar Tower – the oldest part of the house – and to the fells beyond.

The Dutch garden, open from April through to October, is arguably the most peaceful part of the garden, and the ideal place for a meditative moment away from the crowds. The patches of long grass and flowers are home to a host of insects and butterflies and if you look up, you get a great view of the Solar Tower above you.

The summerhouse at the end of this area of the garden is a cosy sanctuary when it's wet and a great place for a quiet read - find a new book in the second-hand bookshop.

The garden is home to lots of wildlife. Sunny embankments with wildflowers are the perfect habitat for bank voles and solitary bees, whilst shaded woodland areas are favourite spaces for hedgehogs. Pools and bog areas in the Rock Garden are alive with newts, frogs and toads, and small holes in walls and trees are the perfect place for black caps and pied flycatchers to nest. A dozen bird boxes are also positioned throughout the garden.

From May - October, join a gardener on the first Wednesday of each month to take in the key areas of the garden, hear about what the gardeners have been up to, and discover what's planned for the month ahead.