Cliveden - Gardens and Grounds

Gardens and Grounds

The estate extends to 375 acres (1.52 km2) of which about 180 acres (0.73 km2) comprise the gardens, the rest being woodland and paddocks.

The formal parterre to the south of the house is one of the largest in Europe at 4 acres (16,000 m2). It consists of clipped yew pyramids and 16 wedge-shaped beds edged with box hedging and filled with colourful seasonal displays of bulbs, annuals and azaleas in a return to the original nineteenth-century planting schemes devised by the Sutherland's gardener John Fleming. The Long Garden consists of topiary in the form of corkscrew-spirals, peacocks and box hedges and was designed by Norah Lindsay in c.1900. The Water Garden was laid out by the 1st Lord Astor in c.1900 and features a pagoda, on an island, bought from the Bagatelle estate in Paris. The planting there is mostly spring-flowering: cherry trees, bush wisterias and giant gunneras. The original Rose Garden, designed by Sir Geoffrey Jellicoe for the Astor family in the early 1960s has since suffered from rose disease and has been replanted as a "secret" garden of herbaceous plants. The planting in the herbaceous borders in the forecourt was designed in the 1970s by the National Trust advisor Graham Stuart Thomas. The west-facing border features "hot"-coloured flowers (red, yellow, orange) and the east-facing border is planted with "cooler" colours (blue, pink and white).

In 2011 the Trust began an ambitious project to restore the 19th-century Round Garden near the eastern edge of the estate. Originally this is where fruit was grown for the house but since the 1950s it has laid overgrown. The circular garden has a diameter of 250 ft and restoration will include reinstating the paths and wrought iron arches as well as original fruit varieties where possible.

There is a lime tree avenue either side of the main drive to the house. Cliveden holds part of the National Plant Collection of Catalpa. In 1897 the 1st Lord Astor imported a section of a Californian redwood and had it installed in the woods. At 16 ft 6 in (5.03 m) across it is the largest section of a Sequoia gigantea in Britain. The woodlands were first laid out by Lord Orkney in the eighteenth century on what had been barren cliff-top; they were later much restocked by Bill Astor but suffered badly in the Great Storm of 1987. The National Trust continues the re-planting of the beechwoods.