The Best Private Gardens Open to Visitors
Beyond the great public gardens, a smaller but vital category of private gardens are open to visitors — often only by appointment or for a few weeks each year. These tend to be the most experimental, most personal and often the most influential gardens in horticulture today.
Great Dixter, East Sussex
Christopher Lloyd's home, now Fergus Garrett's, opens almost daily during the season. The most experimental private garden in England, with study days and symposiums for serious gardeners.
Le Jardin Plume, Normandy
Patrick and Sylvie Quibel's contemporary perennial garden in Normandy, a French equivalent of the Oudolf approach. Open from May to October.
Veddw House Garden, Wales
Anne Wareham and Charles Hawes's personal garden, a rigorous study in formal-meets-naturalistic — perhaps the most-discussed small private garden in Britain.
Plaz Metaxu, Devon
Alasdair Forbes's small but extraordinarily intellectually serious garden, with each garden room dedicated to a different ancient Greek concept.
Beth Chatto Gardens, Essex
Beth Chatto built her garden on degraded land and developed her famous Gravel Garden as a deliberate experiment in extreme conditions. Now run by her family trust.
Hummelo, Netherlands
Piet Oudolf's personal garden and former nursery — the laboratory in which the New Perennial movement was born.
June Blake's Garden, Ireland
A contemporary Irish plantswoman's garden of around 1.5 hectares, attracting international visitors to County Wicklow.
Marwood Hill Gardens, Devon
Privately created plantsman's garden with one of the best winter walks in southern England.
Charles Jencks's Garden of Cosmic Speculation, Scotland
Open only one day a year (typically early May). A landscape garden as cosmological poem.
National Gardens Scheme
The UK's NGS coordinates around 3,500 private gardens opening one or a few days per year to raise money for nursing charities — the largest single private-garden network in the world.
Explore on the map
All of the gardens mentioned in this article are pinned on the interactive map. Use it to plan a route, group nearby sites into a single trip, or compare gardens by style and season.