Garden
Explore our beautiful Gardens
Laid out in the 1920s by Sir Reginald Blomfield, our Arts and Crafts-inspired garden surrounds the Tudor manor house. Herbaceous borders, topiary, a wildflower orchard, herb garden and alpine house ensure interest in every season.
The garden is laid out in a series of spaces edged by walls and yew hedges. Each area is home to different themed borders and plants. Celebrating the quintessential English garden, our long borders and beds are brimming with blooms, from our blue and pale bed to the reds and oranges in the hot bed.
In summer, roses, peonies, delphiniums and foxgloves are in full bloom, their vibrant colours contrasted against a backdrop of green foliage. Grasses and meadow flowers bring a relaxed and informal feel while delicate wildflowers: poppies, cornflowers and ox-eye daisies add splashes of colour. Designed to work with nature, our borders attract bees, butterflies and other pollinators throughout the seasons.
Explore our beautiful Orchard
Including traditional elements of a Tudor garden, today our orchard is home to a wide variety of apples. The orchard is thought to have been an orchard since the days when the estate was owned by the monks of St Andrew’s Priory in Northampton. At the time of the 1920s restoration, there were a few apple trees of great age. Two of them, both more than 6 feet in diameter, were still bearing fruit – a ‘Hanwell Souring’, one of the finest cooking apples known in the Midlands, and an ‘Annie Elizabeth’, one of the best dessert apples. While the ‘Hanwell Souring’ and the ‘Annie Elizabeth’ are long gone, ‘King Lod’ remains, a very early ‘Loddington’, possibly the oldest in the country and certainly the oldest apple tree in Northampton.
Apart from these few fruit trees, the acre of ground remained a rough field until 1927 when it was made into an orchard once again, making it a definite part of the pleasure garden - as was the custom in Tudor times. The apple trees were chosen as much for the beauty of their blossom as for the quality of their fruit, under-planted with springtime masses of muscari, fritillaria and native orchids.
Between the orchard and the house, the lawns replace a pasture meadow where cattle once grazed. Part of Blomfield’s original design the Bowling Green is edged by English lavender and tall yew hedges. A path of small steppingstones through the lawns was replaced in the 1990s with a broader gravel path ending as the stepping stones had done at two examples of topiary work - ‘birds’ standing on broad bases in clipped yew. The ‘bird’ on the left was planted in 1924 by President Taft and the one on the right by Ambassador Harvey. Over the decades, their shape had been obscured and we have worked reshape them back to their original design. Today, our topiary peacocks guard the Manor’s entrance.
Explore Alpine House
Blomfield’s plans also showed a Rock Garden, a popular feature in the 1920s. While there is no evidence this idea was implemented at the time, one of the latest developments in the garden is our alpine area.
Alpine plants are those that are native to mountainous regions, particularly the high-altitude areas above the tree line known as the alpine zone. These plants have adapted to harsh environmental conditions such as extreme cold, intense sunlight, high winds, and poor soil quality. They are characterised by their small stature, compact growth habit and adaptations that help them survive in these challenging environments.
Alpine environments are among the habitats most strongly affected by climate change. With raising temperatures and precipitation affecting snowpack and snowmelt, the growing season and pollinator activity are constrained to the snow-free season.
Alpines favour dry conditions, and while our alpine house is unheated, it offers a dry and protected environment for young plants. To avoid consistently damp conditions, we use grit or gravel on the soil surface. Used to extreme conditions, established alpines cope well with cold or short spells of drought.
Explore The Sulgrave Rose
The peachy blooms of the Sulgrave Rose can be seen in the old rose garden, complemented by the blues and purples of the surrounding herbaceous borders.
Rose gardens have been popular for centuries and are a cherished part of an English garden. While roses are often associated with more traditional garden design, either in more formal, classical settings, or as part of a quintessential cottage garden or traditional herbaceous border, they work just as well in a contemporary, naturalistic scheme.
Once a traditional rose garden, we have developed this space to incorporate a range of plants to bring interest and diversity throughout the year. We have our own rose, The Sulgrave Rose:
Orange blend Floribunda. Registration name: HORsul Exhibition name: The Sulgrave Rose Bred by Colin P. Horner (1933-2005), United Kingdom, 2000.
Our rose garden also features the Nellie Custis rose, which was grown from a cutting taken from a rose planted by General George Washington for his stepdaughter. It was brought over in 1923 as a gift to Sulgrave by a young girl who planted it here.
