Autumn Spectacular at Hole Park Gardens
Our 2024 garden open season concludes with garden open days from 11am to dusk on
Wednesdays, Thursdays and Sundays in October. Free activity trail for children. Dogs welcome on short leads. Autumn Colours
Wednesdays, Thursdays and Sundays in October
Advance Tickets Discounted:
www.holepark.com
Hole Park Gardens in Kent are renowned for their beauty all year round including the spectacular autumn colour. The magnificent mature trees and Japanese Maples provide striking autumn colour around the 16 acre gardens and 10 acre woodland.
Visitors can take a scenic walk along the pathways through the gardens and woodlands to enjoy all the colours of the autumn. The stunning exotic border is also a riot of colour at this time of the year, particularly showcasing the cannas and dahlias. The late flowering and striking agapanthus ‘Hole Park Blue’ is also an impressive sight.
Head Gardener, Quentin Stark said: “After all the regular rain across the summer, the exotic border has filled out beautifully with Dahlias, Brugmansias and Cannas which will continue to flower well into the autumn.
The former rose garden is continuing to perform really well and has a mix of good reliable plants like Rudbeckia 'Goldstern', Achellias, Echinacea purpurea, Penstemon and the more unusual plants like the fabulous shrub Vitax agnus-caste and Strobilanthus and the long flowering Berkheya.
Also, look out for the delightful carved wooden sculpture of a family of bears climbing a tree to reach a honey pot and can peer into the renovated ‘Ice House’ which was built in around 1740 to store ice long before the days of refrigeration.
After a walk, visitors can choose to visit the Coach House Tearoom which has a new autumn menu. The tearoom has retained its 5-star hygiene rating from Ashford Borough Council following a recent inspection. The new menu features a wide variety of options including a varied selection of filled roles, seasonal homemade soup, ploughman platters, pork pies, quiche of the day and a delicious selection of cakes.
For more information on Hole Park Gardens, please visit
www.holepark.com or call 01580 241344
Hole Park
Hole Park is situated 4 miles west of Tenterden on the B2086 between Rolvenden and Cranbrook.
A family owned estate, Hole Park has been owned by the Barham family for the past four generations. The gardens manage to combine formalised gardens with natural woodland. They cover some 16 acres and were developed, laid out and planted by Colonel Barham, the great-grandfather of the present owner, in the years between the two World Wars.
Hole Park is now owned and managed by Edward Barham, and much of what can be seen today is due to the contribution made by Edward’s late father, David Barham who died earlier this year.
The garden is renowned for beautifully clipped topiary and great yew hedges which provide shelter for the lawns and splendid borders. The walled garden contains mixed borders, pools and a water garden. Marvellous climbing plants also provide a fine display here. The natural garden has bulbs, azaleas, rhododendrons and flowering shrubs.
There is a woodland bluebell walk and, in the autumn, the foliage colour is spectacular. Hole Park has many fine trees and the garden is surrounded by superb parkland with wonderful views across the Kentish Weald.
Formal gardens surround the house. Walls and yew hedges, which are a particular feature of Hole Park, shelter broad expanses of lawns. Clipped entirely by hand, it is claimed that nowhere in the county can yews be seen trimmed to greater precision. Fountains and a swimming pool, the egg pond, the walled rose garden, herbaceous borders and wrought iron gates all contribute to make a series of gardens within a garden, united by the lawns, while outwards there are lovely views of the Weald over the surrounding 250 acres of finely timbered parkland.
At the rear of the house, beyond a beech hedge measuring six feet thick and 12 feet high, lies the Policy, massed with daffodils in April with its heathers, flowering trees and shrubs, banks of rhododendrons and azaleas. Amongst the trees can be seen collections of birch, juniper, cypresses and fine oaks. Rhododendrons, camellias, magnolias and primulas are all here in abundance and further plantings are now being made to adjoining woodlands.
Photo (left) Stuart Kirk
Photo (right) Caroline Edmunds, Pennington PR