Summer garden tour: Cumbria and North Lancashire
Sunday 27 June – Thursday 1 July 2027
This three-and-a-half-day tour will visit beautiful gardens in Cumbria and North Lancashire from a four-star hotel close to Kendal. Visits will be led by owners and head gardeners with highlights including a visit to Gresgarth Hall Gardens – the private garden of Arabella Lennox Boyd which is only occasionally open – and a guided visit to one of the best areas of limestone pavement in Britain, with a wealth of unusual plants.
The cost of the trip is expected to be about £820 per person sharing a room dependent on numbers and includes welcome reception, four nights bed and breakfast with three-course dinners, one lunch and all garden entrances and refreshments specified in the programme.
Additional costs:
- £230 per person single supplement
- £25 per person for transport on Sunday at 14.30 from Oxenholme station to Levens Hall and on to hotel
- £30 per room per night for View Rooms (Note: Six available, access to one of which has eight steps)
Standard double rooms have a walk-in shower, standard twin rooms have a bath and over-bath shower. Singles will be allocated standard double rooms, unless they request otherwise. Lift available to all standard rooms.
Car parking is available at the hotel. The most convenient station is Oxenholme (not Kendal) – two miles from the hotel, a ten-minute drive. Taxi phone numbers can be provided for those not joining the Levens visit. Transport to and between gardens will be provided.
Included in the programme
Tour led by the head gardener of Levens Hall. Dating back to the 1690s, the ten acres of gardens retain many original features including the world’s oldest topiary gardens. This unique collection of ancient box and yew trees, in abstract or geometric shape, rises up from a beautiful display of underplanting, populated with an ever-changing array of over 30,000 bedding plants, all grown in the greenhouses on site. In addition, beyond an old orchard and separated by the giant beech hedges, lie the magnificent herbaceous borders, as well as the first recorded ha-ha in Britain. Together with wall borders, vegetable, herb, fountain and rose gardens, fine lawns, wildflower meadows and willow labyrinth, generations of owners and gardeners have added contemporary design within a historic framework.
Visit to Gresgarth Hall Gardens – the private garden of Arabella Lennox-Boyd, only occasionally open to the public – with introductory talk by the head gardener followed by self-guided walk (with maps)
Yewbarrow House – a colourful four-acre garden filled with exotic and rare plants with dramatic views over Morecambe Bay. Escorted tour – plus tea/coffee and cakes
Abi and Tom’s Garden Plants, Halecat Garden Nursery – Introductory talk and tour by Tom – to include access to propagating areas, stock beds and family garden not usually open to the public. More than 1,000 different herbaceous perennials are grown in the nursery which was featured in RHS magazine “The Garden” in September 2026.
Lowther Castle and Gardens – after more than 50 years in the wilderness, in 2008 RHS Chelsea gold medal winner and international garden designer Dan Pearson was invited to take over and a 20-year landscape masterplan was put in place. We will be led by Head Gardener Andrea Brunsendorf, who gave MPG an excellent tour of Inner Temple Gardens in May 2016. https://www.medpag.org/events/members-reports/inns-of-court-2016/
Hutton Roof Crags – visit with Scott Petrek, Southern Reserves Officer, Cumbria Wildlife Trust. An opportunity to see one of the best areas of limestone pavement in Britain, with a wealth of unusual plants. The pavement occurs in a mosaic with woodland, scrub, grassland and heath and includes unusual limestone-pavement plants such as dark-red helleborine, lily-of-the-valley, rigid buckler-fern, limestone fern and angular Solomon’s-seal.
Holehird Gardens – A ten-acre fellside garden, managed by the Lakeland Horticultural Society which holds six National Collections – Astilbe, Daboecia, Meconopsis, Polystichum, Tanacetum coccineum and the Hosta Mouse series. Tour with volunteer guide.
Matson Ground – A two-acre mature Arts and Crafts garden with views into the Lake District. Tour with the head gardener and picnic lunch on the terrace.
Yews – A seven-acre Arts and Crafts garden designed by Mawson and Avray Tipping overlooking Windermere. Guided tour by owner. Tea and cake
Book now to secure your place as numbers are limited. After sending in the booking form you will receive confirmation of a place being available and a deposit of £280 must then be paid. Enquiries or for more details email: Madalyn Hughes.
Booking Form
Please note that MPG events are open to members of MPG and its sister organisations only.
Bank Transfer
By bank transfer with reference CUMBRIA
Sort Code 40 40 32
Account 5161 4002
Account name: Mediterranean Plants and Gardens
IBAN GB63 HBUK 4040 3251 6140 02
Euros
If you wish to pay by bank transfer in euros, please contact David Mason