The Great Gardens of Cumbria, One Private Day at a Time

Everyone comes to Cumbria for the fells, and quite right too. But along the county's gentler southern and eastern edges — the Kent valley, the Cartmel Peninsula, the old forest country toward Penrith — sits a quieter inheritance: a run of historic gardens as fine as any in the north of England, each attached to a house whose family history runs back centuries, and several of them decades or centuries older than the very idea of Lake District tourism. Gardens are one of my own great loves, so consider this guide a personal tour of the five we know best — because each one has its own dedicated private tour, at £459 for your group of up to seven, with the itinerary, the history and the storyteller entirely yours.

The short version: five gardens, five private tours. Levens Hall for the oldest topiary garden in the world; Sizergh Castle for its celebrated limestone rock garden and 800 years of one family; Holker Hall for the great cascade and the Cartmel Peninsula's soft microclimate; Dalemain for a garden that has grown with a single family since 1679 on the edge of Ullswater; Hutton in the Forest for walled gardens in the remnant of a medieval royal forest. Levens, Sizergh and Holker run as morning or afternoon private tours; Dalemain and Hutton in the Forest as full days.

Levens Hall — the garden that time forgot, on purpose

Begin with the superlative. The topiary garden at Levens Hall was laid out in 1694 by Guillaume Beaumont — a gardener trained in the French formal tradition — and it has never been swept away by fashion. That is the astonishing part. Almost every great English garden was remade in the eighteenth century when the landscape movement declared formality obsolete; Levens simply kept clipping. The result is the oldest topiary garden in the world: over three centuries of continuous shears, producing yews of such age and scale that they have long since stopped being shapes and become characters. Around them run Beaumont's original framework of beech hedges and borders that the head gardeners plant spectacularly to this day. The house itself — an Elizabethan mansion wrapped around a medieval peel tower — would justify the visit alone; with the garden it becomes one of the most singular half-days in the county.

Sizergh Castle — eight hundred years and a rock garden

A few miles up the Kent valley, Sizergh has been home to the Strickland family since 1239 — a continuity so long it is difficult to hold in the mind. The house grew around a fourteenth-century peel tower and contains some of the finest Elizabethan carved interiors in the north; the gardens, now cared for with the National Trust, hold the horticultural treasure: a celebrated limestone rock garden, planted between the wars and now one of the largest of its kind, at its most painterly when the Japanese maples turn in autumn. Sizergh is the connoisseur's choice for guests who like their gardens with geology and their houses with genealogy — and on a private tour there is time for both.

Holker Hall — the confident garden of the Cartmel Peninsula

Out on the Cartmel Peninsula, where Morecambe Bay softens the climate, Holker Hall is the Cavendish family's seat and the most exuberant garden of the five. The house was rebuilt with tremendous Victorian confidence after a fire in 1871; the award-winning gardens answer it with a great formal cascade, woodland walks and plantings that exploit the peninsula's mild air — this is where Cumbria grows things the central fells can only envy. Holker pairs beautifully with the unhurried lanes of Cartmel itself, and the drive out along the peninsula is quietly one of the loveliest approaches of any tour we run.

Dalemain — one family's garden since 1679

North now, to the edge of Ullswater. Dalemain has been owned by a single family since 1679, and it shows in the best way: the house is medieval, Tudor and Georgian all at once behind its rose-pink Georgian front, and the gardens have the layered, personal quality of something tended by generations rather than committees — ancient trees, a famous herbaceous border, roses against old stone. Dalemain is also, delightfully, the home of the World's Original Marmalade Awards, which tells you everything about its character: grand enough for four centuries, unstuffy enough for marmalade. The private tour runs as a full day, with Ullswater's landscape thrown in around it.

Hutton in the Forest — walled gardens in a royal forest

Finally, the least known and for some visitors the favourite. Hutton in the Forest stands in a surviving fragment of the medieval royal forest of Inglewood, and the house is seven centuries of architectural accumulation around — once again — a peel tower, that most Cumbrian of cores. The gardens set formal walled compartments and terraces against the woodland that gives the place its name, and the whole estate has an air of being slightly out of time. A full private day here suits guests who have done the famous houses and want the one their friends have not heard of.

How the private garden tours work

Each of the five runs as its own dedicated private tour — £459 per group of up to seven, with no scheduled equivalent; these tours only run privately. Levens Hall, Sizergh Castle and Holker Hall are offered as morning or afternoon half-days; Dalemain and Hutton in the Forest are full days. Pickups are our usual four points — Windermere station, Bowness Pier 1, Ambleside and Oxenholme — and free cancellation applies up to 24 hours before. If you cannot choose, or want to combine more than one house into a longer visit, enquire and we will help you build it; pairing gardens across a two-day stay is a request we enjoy.

Why see a garden with a storyteller at all?

Because a great garden is an argument, not a decoration. Levens is an argument about resisting fashion; Sizergh about continuity; Holker about Victorian confidence; Dalemain about family; Hutton about the forest that was here first. Walk them unguided and you see lovely planting. Walk them with someone who knows the families, the gardeners, the fires, the fortunes and the three hundred years of shears, and every hedge acquires a plot. That is the whole case for the guided day — and privately, the plot is told at your pace, to your questions, for your group alone.

Frequently Asked Questions

Sources & further reading

• Levens Hall & Gardens — the world's oldest topiary garden
• National Trust — Sizergh
• Holker Hall & Gardens
• Dalemain Mansion & Gardens
• Hutton in the Forest