St Paul's Walden Bury, Hitchin SG4 8BP
Celebrated 18th century Landscape Garden and House
5 miles south of Hitchin, Hertfordshire, on B651
A notable landscape garden, laid out in the early 18th century, Grade I listed. It covers about 50 acres. This is the childhood home of Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother.
Long avenues lead to temples, statues, lake and ponds. Flower gardens bloom in spring and summer, with beautiful displays of magnolias, rhododendrons, irises, lilies. Wild flowers are encouraged, especially cowslips, bluebells, spotted orchids. The surrounding estate, with its arable and livestock farm and its ancient woodland, is a traditional country estate set in the heart of the beautiful Hertfordshire countryside.
The front of the house dates from 1720, notable for its charming architecture. There is also a substantial Victorian addition.
Garden open for charity, through the National Garden Scheme. Sundays 2-7pm, 14th May, 11th June with Open Farm Sunday. Entrance £5, children £1. Homemade teas.
The house and garden can be visited by appointment, £15.00, Garden only £7.50. Suggest dates and times you would like to visit. Email stpaulswalden@gmail.com
Venue for weddings and other events There is a licence for Civil Ceremonies, in the house or in one of the temples in the garden. The garden can also be hired for wedding receptions or similar events. See link to Wedding Venues on the left. Email stpaulswalden@gmail.com
Summer camp August 21st-25th. For ages 6-12 and 12-18, including drama workshop, nature art and forest school. For more information click here
Charity run (10k,5k,2k) September 24th in aid of Farms for City Children. For more information and to register click here.
Publications:The Private Gardens of England, edited Tania Compton, published by Constable
Die Geheimen Gärten von England, by H Howcroft, published DVA
The garden features in Country Life, 25 March 2015
To St Pauls Walden Bury … to wander round one of England’s most romantic gardens. The oaks and ashes are joyfully green against an azure sky. Every plant is in improbable perfection; towering forest trees, magnolias in the infant innocence of pale flowers, rhododendrons of every hue, billowing white clouds of Siberian malus, ivory flowered dogwoods and wild service trees the size of oaks. But this is a woodland garden disciplined by calm grass rides, arrow straight, turning your steps towards a statue, a pavilion, a grassy theatre overlooking a simple fountain. At one moment lilies distract you, at another the perfume of azaleas: all the spring garden pleasures are there, all the more intense for the calming effect of geometry and proportion, measured out in straight beech hedges.
Hugh Johnson, Hortus journal, Tradescant’s Diary, 10 June 2013
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