Wimpole Gardens

View the colourful formal Parterre, take a walk through the Pleasure Grounds along the Explorer Pathway, meandering your way to the Walled Garden surrounded by herbaceous borders and fruit trees.

Garden and landscape designers have all left their mark on Wimpole in one form or another, including some well known names such as Charles Bridgeman, Capability Brown and Humprey Repton.

The garden you see today has many layers of historical gardens, with each owner wanting to leave their mark, from the iconic South Avenue to the eighteenth century Walled Garden.

Colourful autumn trees in the park at Wimpole

Autumn at Wimpole Estate

Discover Wimpole Estate as the season changes and the gardens and parkland come alive with autumn colour. Take a stroll across the parkland, enjoying the vibrant reds, yellows and oranges of the wide variety of trees as you make your way to the atmospheric Chinese Bridge and Gothic Folly, framed by the colours of the changing leaves. Within the gardens, discover the cathedral of trees at Bakers Wood; a striking avenue of trees framing an acer, which as the leaves change will flame with bright autumn colour. Conkers are plentiful in the pleasure grounds, perfect for collecting, photography and wild art! Don’t forget to visit the Walled Garden to discover the season’s harvest and our famous display of autumn squashes, gourds and pumpkins in the Glasshouse.

Walled Garden

This 18th-century walled garden was constructed by William Eames and features Sir John Soane’s glasshouse. This is where we nurture our young plants for the vegetable plots and our thousands of bedding plants for the parterre.
 
Each year we deliver fresh seasonal produce from the garden to our restaurant. We also have a flower team who use a cutting border in the Walled Garden to use in their floral arrangements in the Hall and on the tables in our Food & Beverage outlets.
 

Parterre

Our parterre garden is a reflection of past glories in the North Park. This area of garden was lost for a century and restored in the 1990s.
 
See the parterre in its full glory in the spring there is a colourful display of red and yellow tulips and during the summer 12,000 salvia and pelargonium plants make a vibrant and colourful sight, often best viewed from the Chancellor's Dressing Room on the first floor of the Hall.
 

Pleasure Ground

In the 18th-century these grounds were where the family took evening strolls and enjoyed picnics. They contained many rare, exotic and unusual plants sourced from all over the world discovered by plant hunters who were widely travelled.

Garden highlights

A colourful display of squash, pumpkin and gourd in the glasshouse at Wimpole

Wimpole Walled Garden 

Wimpole's Walled Garden is a place not to be missed on your visit, seek it out, it is both a beautiful and productive part of the estate.

Parterre garden at Wimpole in the Autumn

Wimpole Parterre and Dutch Garden 

A colourful Union Jack pattern of triangular beds, edged with box and planted with seasonal bedding and evergreens.

Upturned tree stumps interplanted with ferns

Wimpole Pleasure Ground 

Often overlooked part of the garden, this area links the Hall with the Farm and Parkland, but holds an important collection of trees and has a dazzling display of daffodils every Spring.

 

Greener gardening

For a greener way of gardening we generate tons of home-made compost, use solar panels to power machinery and harvest rainwater. We also use manure from our farm, peat-free compost and hand scythe in the orchards.