The Gardens
The castle is set within extensive gardens, bounded by a 19th-century wall. The gardens were first laid out in the 16th century, but have undergone many changes. A bowling green lies to the west of the castle, fringed by yew trees, which may once have formed a hedge around a parterre in this area. West of the bowling green is a flower garden, laid out in 1993 to an 18th-century design, and containing yew, cedar, monkey puzzle and Lawson's cypress trees. To the north is the 1920s Arts and Crafts garden, which is home to a 215-metre (705 ft) -long herbaceous border, and is overlooked by a castellated 19th-century gazebo, or summer house. The border is recognised by the Guinness Book of Records as being the longest in the world. The rest of the gardens comprise lawns, with numerous mature specimen trees, including redwood, beech, and sycamore.
There is a well preserved 16th-century beehive-shaped doocot, or pigeon house, in the castle grounds. The doocot is 7.6 metres (25 ft) high, and contains around 1000 nesting boxes for pigeons, which were an important source of food for the castle's inhabitants. To the north-east, now located outside the castle gardens, is a 16th-century gateway which formerly served the castle, but now serves the adjacent farm.
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“Within the memory of many of my townsmen the road near which my house stands resounded with the laugh and gossip of inhabitants, and the woods which border it were notched and dotted here and there with their little gardens and dwellings, though it was then much more shut in by the forest than now.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Thou didst create the night, but I made the lamp.
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Thou didst create the deserts, mountains and forests,
I produced the orchards, gardens and groves.
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—Muhammad, Sir Iqbal (1873–1938)