Skipwith Hall Garden
In front of the Queen Anne manor house, Skipwith Hall, sits an ancient mulberry tree and the four acre gardens are boundaried by walls dating from 1700. There are extensive mixed borders and several areas including Richard’s Garden that were designed by Cecil Pinsent, who also designed several well known gardens in Italy between the wars.
The working kitchen garden was refashioned in 2005 around a circular pool with a maze of herbs, veg and cut flower borders and pleached crab apples. A handsome Victorian greenhouse stands on the south facing wall. A double beech hedge divides the kitchen garden from the orchard with a latticework of grass paths. Well- trained fruit clothes the orchard walls. Through the far corner door lies the Italian garden which is currently undergoing restoration.
This year visitors will find the summer house in the corner of the woodland has been transformed into a shell house by local artist Linda Fenwick. In the mini arboretum started by the current owner’s father in the 1980s are Acer, Davidia, Halesia, Cornus, Hamamelis and other specimen trees.