David Harber recommends: Gardens to visit in the UK this summer

The UK has long been considered one of the world’s great gardening nations. It’s a reputation built not only on grand historic estates, but on a deeply held belief that the designed landscape is a form of art. The gardens in this list embody that tradition at its finest: places where horticulture, craftsmanship, and creative vision combine to produce spaces that are as thought-provoking as they are beautiful.

For those who tend their own green spaces, however modest, these gardens offer an exceptional source of inspiration. It’s a sentiment shared by leading figures in the industry – Xa Tollemache of Helmingham Hall among them – who cite regular garden visiting as central to their own creative practice.

Many of these gardens reach their peak in summer, though each rewards a visit at any point in the year. We recommend checking opening times before you travel and leaving time to explore the plant shops, more often than not, you’ll want to take something home.

National Treasures

These are the gardens that have shaped how Britain thinks about horticulture — places of deep history and living legacy that continue to set the standard for what a garden can be.

Great Dixter, East Sussex

One of the most influential gardens of the twentieth century, Great Dixter was transformed by the late plantsman Christopher Lloyd into a place of bold experimentation and ceaseless invention. Today, head gardener Fergus Garrett leads the team, pushing experimentation while preserving Dixter’s spirit of generosity, colour, and constant renewal. The legendary Long Border and the exuberant Sub Tropical Garden — at their peak in late summer — are not to be missed.

Tropical Gardens

Britain’s mild western coasts and the warming influence of the Gulf Stream have made it possible to cultivate plants from the far corners of the world. These gardens delight in the unexpected.

Inverewe, Scottish Highlands

A lush, tropical oasis perched on a peninsula at the edge of Loch Ewe, amid the rugged landscape of Wester Ross, this world-famous historic garden was created in 1800s by Osgood Mackenzie. The secret of its extraordinary plant collection — Himalayan blue poppies, Wollemi pines, Californian redwoods — lies in the warming currents of the Gulf Stream and a dense shelter belt of trees planted to protect the garden from Atlantic gales. Extended daylight hours produce rapid growth and Inverewe is a unique place to spot Scotland’s iconic wildlife including red squirrels, otter and seals.

Tremenheere Sculpture Gardens, Cornwall

Tucked into a beautiful sheltered valley near Penzance, overlooking St Michael’s Mount, Tremenheere combines structural sub-tropical planting with site-specific sculptures by internationally renowned artists. Sculptures by James Turrell, David Nash and Richard Long are hidden among palms, tree ferns and giant agaves. Each piece placed in considered dialogue with the landscape.

Aberglasney, Carmarthenshire

A renowned plantsman’s paradise with a unique Elizabethan cloister garden at its heart, Aberglasney in the Towy Valley is one of Wales’s finest gardens. Its crown jewel is the Ninfarium, a glass-roofed atrium built above the ruined rooms of the mansion, housing an extraordinary collection of sub-tropical and exotic plants.

The Lost Gardens of Heligan, Cornwall

Rescued from decades of neglect and opened to the public in the 1990s, Heligan is one of Britain’s most celebrated restoration stories. The productive walled garden is considered one of the finest in the country, cultivating over 300 heritage varieties of fruit, vegetable and herb using traditional Victorian methods. The Jungle, a steep valley of tree ferns, banana plants and giant rhubarb, offers a tropical paradise to lose yourself in on a hot day.

Forward-Thinking Gardens

These are gardens that ask searching questions about how we should garden for the future. Each place is taking bold, ecological approaches to design, planting and the relationship between human creativity and the natural world.

Knepp Walled Garden, West Sussex

Featured in Monty Don’s British Gardens and David Attenborough’s The Wonder of Song, Knepp’s Rewilded Walled Garden is changing the way we think about gardening. The advisory team behind the gardens include landscape designer Tom Stuart-Smith and James Hitchmough, professor of horticultural ecology at the University of Sheffield. The former croquet lawn and herbaceous beds have been transformed into a climate-resilient mosaic of habitats teeming with wildlife. Take a guided of self-guided tour, and the award-winning Wilding Kitchen restaurant completes the experience with outstanding seasonal cooking.

Garden for the Future, Sheffield Park, East Sussex

Designed as ‘a garden within a garden’, the Garden for the Future at Sheffield Park and Garden addresses the urgent challenges posed by climate change, introducing a dynamic succession-led planting scheme of exotic species built for resilience. Designed by three-time RHS Chelsea Gold Medallist Joe Perkins, it represents the first major new addition to this Grade I landscape in over seventy years. Set within the wider 120-acre garden it brings interest in texture, structure and colour to the garden in spring and summer.

Chelsea Physic Garden, London

Tucked away beside the River Thames in London, Chelsea Physic Garden was founded in 1673 and is London’s oldest botanic garden. Home to a unique living collection of around 5,000 different edible, useful, medicinal and historical plants, its intimate four-acre walled site contains the UK’s largest outdoor fruiting olive tree, one of Europe’s oldest rock gardens (the Pond Rockery) and beautifully restored glasshouses. Summer evening openings make this a particularly atmospheric warm-weather visit.

OmVed Gardens, Highgate, London

OmVed Gardens is a garden, exhibition, events and learning space exploring food, ecology and creativity for climate resilience. Hidden down a narrow alley off Highgate High Street in North London, this three-acre Community Interest Company weaves together wildflower meadow, organic kitchen garden, ponds, a seed library and a rooftop edible garden. A programme of supper clubs, workshops and summer evening events brings the garden alive throughout the season.

Romantic Gardens

Gardens where atmosphere is everything. Places that combine history, horticulture and a certain genius loci to create something that lingers long after you leave.

Sissinghurst Castle Garden, Kent

Created by poet and writer Vita Sackville-West and her husband Harold Nicolson, Sissinghurst is among the most famous gardens in England. Lead by Head Gardener and renowned horticulturalist Troy Scott Smith, it unfolds as a series of intimate rooms, each with its own mood and palette. The legendary White Garden and the rose-filled tower garden are summer highlights. While the newly completed Delos, a Mediterranean garden inspired by the Greek island the couple loved, was reimagined in collaboration with celebrated landscape designer Dan Pearson, adding a contemporary chapter to this endlessly layered place.

Gordon Castle Walled Garden, Moray

Situated between the River Spey and the Moray Coast, Gordon Castle Walled Garden is one of Scotland’s best-kept secrets. Almost eight acres in size, it is one of the oldest and largest kitchen gardens in Britain, lovingly restored by designer Arne Maynard and tended by a devoted team of gardeners. Highlights include 259 espaliered fruit trees lining the ancient walls and a central lavender garden. The award-winning café serves produce grown just steps away.

Hotel Endsleigh, Devon

Set in 108 acres of fairytale gardens, woodland, follies and grottos on the edge of Dartmoor, Hotel Endsleigh was created by Humphry Repton, one of England’s last great landscape designers of the eighteenth century. The Grade I-listed grounds spill down towards the River Tamar through a romantic sequence of formal parterre, rose walk, shell grotto, rockery and arboretum, punctuated by an extraordinary collection of champion trees. Guests of the hotel may explore it freely; the gardens are also open to day visitors by arrangement.

Helmingham Hall, Suffolk

Surrounded by a working Saxon moat and set within a 400-acre deer park, Helmingham Hall’s Grade I listed gardens were redesigned by Chelsea Gold Medallist Xa Tollemache whose family have been custodians of for the last 500 years. The walled kitchen garden, classic parterre, herb and knot garden and double herbaceous borders form one of the most romantic designed landscapes in England. Formal structures are softened by exuberant planting, and visitors consistently respond to the rare blend of history and artistry in this most unhurried of gardens.

Sculpture Gardens

Some of the most powerful encounters with art happen not in galleries but outdoors. Landscapes changed by light, weather and season become part of the composition and when sculpture is introduced, these changes are felt more keenly.

Jupiter Artland, Edinburgh

Set in the grounds of a nineteenth-century country house sixteen kilometres west of Edinburgh, Jupiter Artland was established in 1999 by art collectors Robert and Nicky Wilson. Over 30 permanent works by artists including Antony Gormley, Anish Kapoor, Andy Goldsworthy and Joana Vasconcelos can be discovered in the 120 acres of woodland and meadow. There is no fixed route, which is precisely the point.

Yorkshire Sculpture Park, West Yorkshire

Set within the 18th-century Bretton Hall estate, Yorkshire Sculpture Park displays over 60 outdoor sculptures by internationally acclaimed artists including Elisabeth Frink, Andy Goldsworthy, Henry Moore and James Turrell, alongside a year-round programme of major temporary exhibitions across six indoor galleries. It is the largest outdoor sculpture park in Europe, and the rolling 500-acre landscape of lakes, parkland and woods is a destination in itself. Allow a full day.

The Hepworth Wakefield Garden, West Yorkshire

Designed by Tom Stuart-Smith in response to the bold, angular forms of David Chipperfield’s award-winning gallery building, the Hepworth Wakefield Garden draws inspiration from its striking setting between nineteenth-century red-brick mills and the River Calder. Free and open daily, it combines bold perennial planting with outdoor sculpture including works by Barbara Hepworth, Michael Craig-Martin and Lynn Chadwick.

The Whitworth, Manchester

Part of the University of Manchester and set within Whitworth Park, the Whitworth’s Art Garden, designed by landscape and garden designer Sarah Price, is focused on waves of texture, colour and scent that reveal themselves throughout the seasons and is complemented by a sculpture terrace and an orchard garden. The gallery itself is free to enter and holds a world-class collection of textiles, prints and modern art. The café-in-the-trees has a panoramic view over the park and is one of the loveliest spots in to visit in Manchester.

As well as these notable gardens, it’s worth exploring the National Garden Scheme (NGS) website.  It’s a charitable organisation giving visitors the unique opportunity to visit exceptional gardens, usually not open to the public. Over 3,000 gardens across the UK, Northern Ireland and the Channel Islands take part and money raised from admission, tea and cake is donated to nursing and health charities.

If you have a few spare weekends over the coming weeks, do try to visit a garden or two. Especially if you’re in the process of designing a garden or planning a refresh. You’ll come away with world-class ideas and inspiration to upgrade your outdoor space.