The garden at Standen

Standen pictured in high summer from the garden. — Standen is an Arts and Crafts gem nestled deep in the Sussex countryside. | © National Trust Images / Chris Jonas

Explore the garden at Standen, divided into many outdoor 'rooms', each with its own theme, colours, texture and detail. The 12-acre garden at Standen is almost entirely the creation of a self-taught gardener, Margaret Beale, who was inspired by the Arts and Crafts movement.

Autumn is a special time in the garden at Standen. The wonderful changing colours of our Japanese maples really suit the warm brick and stone colours of the house and garden walls. The woodland views from the top of the garden towards the Medway valley and Ashdown Forest are also beginning to change to autumn colours.

Elsewhere in the garden, Michaelmas daisies and dahlias continue to flower and the ornamental grasses in the borders around the house look wonderful in the mellow autumn light.

The fruit on the trees in the Orchard, Kitchen Garden and Goose Green are at their best and look out for the medlar on Goose Green with its unusually shaped fruit which are harvested in December to make a wonderful jelly.

The Garden in Autumn

The vibrant acer bed near the Quarry Garden is one of the highlights at Standen in autumn, with the trees giving a display of stunning colour. In the Kitchen Garden plenty of pumpkins and squash are grown for the Barn Cafe to use in seasonal dishes. If you want to know the individual varieties we're growing, pop into the Kitchen Garden on your next visit and see the names inscribed on the pumpkins - pink banana squash is one of our favourites and it's relatively easy to grow too. For Halloween see a display of the pumpkins we've grown here at Standen in the Bothy and Kitchen Garden.

Autumn flowers in the Rosery at Standen | © National Trust Images / Laurence Perry

Pink and apricot coloured dahlia flowers in the kitchen garden against the backdrop of the house and a bright blue sky — The Kitchen Garden in high summer | © National Trust Images / Laurence Perry

Explore Standen’s Garden

Goose Green

Any visit to the garden must start and end at Goose Green, the heart of the garden for a century and more. Three large plane trees dominate this space, surrounded on each side by domestic and rural features – the Kitchen Garden, the old farm buildings, the servants' wing of the house and the medieval farmhouse on a small rise above. Once home to geese, cows and horses, it is now a wonderful place to relax and enjoy these most beautiful of surroundings.

The House Terrace and Quarry Garden

Around the house itself is where Margaret showed her real passion for plants, the rarest, most showy and those that were most special to her were planted within a few yards of the door to the garden from the conservatory.

Only the most privileged guests were allowed into this area, which includes the shady and surprising Quarry Garden. It’s so close to the house itself but feels a lifetime away.

Top Terrace and Rock Top Walk

The upper garden, once thickly wooded, lost many trees in the Great Storm of 1987, but their replacements, now approaching over 30 years in age, are quickly reclothing the hillside with colours, shapes, textures, scents and sounds.

Here you'll find the most spectacular views across the Medway Valley to Ashdown Forest – virtually unspoiled by any development, save for the 1950s Weir Wood Reservoir, which meanders through the landscape like a river, and is now a well-established part of the scenery.

Further round you’ll find the Bothy, built in 2017 in an area of garden lost for decades to scrub. It too boasts fine views towards the tower of East Grinstead Church and into the intimate landscape of the High Weald.

Family fun

The lower garden is where the family had fun: the Croquet Lawn was – and is – a place for sitting and games.

The Rosery, so recently lost to invasive bamboo, is currently being restored and is the site of the swimming pond where the Beale children used to learn to swim.

The Kitchen Garden

Nearby is the orchard, home to hives of honeybees and many old varieties of apple. Here the grass is left to grow long, allowing wildflowers to flourish including delicate orchids and the diminutive yellow rattle.

The Kitchen Garden is close to the house and originally nearly three acres, almost a quarter of the whole garden. Recently brought back into production after quite some time as private gardens, it's full of a wide range of tasty crops that are supplied to the café throughout the year.