Hestercombe – The Exquisite Garden Of England
Posted On December 16, 2009
The charming Edwardian garden Hestercombe featured in BBC TV’s Garden Through Time series is feast to the eyes of visitors. Garden that blossoms the love and romance in you when you visit it. Its magnificient Georgian landscape, scenic Victorian Shruberry and terrace and Edwardian gardens combine to make the picturesque and breathe taking exquisite garden for you. The garden is located at Cheddon Fitzpaine, Taunton, Somerset, England, TA2 8LG.
The Oxford Companion to Gardens observes that ‘Hestercombe is remarkable for the bold, concise pattern of its layout, and for the minute attention to detail everywhere to be seen in the variety and imaginative handling of contrasting materials, whether cobble, tile, flint, or thinly coursed local stone’.
These marvelous garden’s conception and handiwork is by Sir Edwin Luytens and Gertrude Jekyll; the earlier 40-acre Georgian landscape garden, in which these formal gardens sit, was created by Copelstone Warre Bampfylde.
Edwin Lutyens pioneerd the architecture, of the garden and Gertrude Jekyll gave abundant color-coordinated plantings. Together they created and established grand and imperialistic Hestercombe Gardens.
- The Arts and Crafts garden, by Edwin Lutyens and Gertrude Jekyll has a sunken parterre, a water garden and a large pergola on the garden boundary.
- You enter through the chinese gates.
- The “Great Plat” combined the patterned features of a parterre with the hardy herbaceous planting espoused by Miss Jekyll. Its broken into geometric spaces and colorful plantations of flora according to seasonal timigs like spring delphiniums to summer cannas.
- Luteye’s elliptical steps and the use of stone to create the spaces within the gardens — these are seen at their finest here.
- Victorian Terrace planted in lavender, catmint and other purple and silver plants.
- Lutyens also designed the orangery about 50 m east of the main house
- Woodland walks, temple, waterfalls, and breathtaking views across the vale of Taunton.
Opening times - All year. Daily except Christmas Day. 
Open 10am to 6pm.
Admission – Adult £7.50 (includes 10% voluntary gift aid donation), 2 Children free with each Adult.
Hestercombe Gardens are visited by approximately 70,000 people per year. The estate is Grade I listed on the English Heritage Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in England.
The site also includes a 0.08 hectare biological Site of Special Scientific Interest in Somerset, notified in 2000. The site is used as a roost site by Lesser Horseshoe Bats.
Hestercombe Gardens is the finest gardens in the world offering biodiversity as well. Its magnificence and beauty will touch to you making you to visit all the more next time.
