SECRET GARDEN TOUR

A Journey Through Manor Houses And Cottage Gardens, Set Against The Inspiring Landscapes Of West Dorset And Somerset.

Monday 1st June - Sunday 7th June 2026

In a recent interview for G&T with The Financial Times, Jason spoke of the ‘enfolding secrecy’ of the region, ‘an extension of the very idea of a garden, a paradise, a refuge in a turbulent world.’ Dorset remains one of England’s hidden corners, and is the only county without a motorway.

Our Secret Garden Tour explores many gardens which are themselves hidden behind mellow walls, the grand and the small, gardens declamatory and gardens intimate, at a perfect moment in the year.

The price of the tour includes your 6 night stay at Symondsbury Old Rectory, a spacious 300-year old Georgian house, as well as delicious teas and dinners prepared by Caroline and Clare, with help from Dorset’s best cake baker, Haley. As usual we will be lunching at a variety of our favourite restaurants in this beautiful corner of south-west England. It’s all included. 

PLEASE NOTE: ALL PRICES ARE PER PERSON. In booking a single place only, please don't forget to add the Single Supplement. 

Book before 1st July 2025 using the code EARLYBIRD for a 10%  discount.

Arrive at Symondsbury Old Rectory for tea. We have time to unwind and enjoy the garden over drinks, before dinner is served.

Simon Tiffin and Jason Goodwin will set the scene with an introductory talk on the history and gardens of west Dorset.

This morning we head to a garden located in one of the most beautiful landscapes in the West Country, Devon’s Blackdown Hills.

The stunning garden, surrounding medieval South Wood Farm, was first conceived by Professor Clive Potter, with the designer Arne Maynard helping him bring the garden together into a cohesive design. The result, in its owner’s words, is ‘a garden that slowly melts into the landscape’, in perfect harmony with its surrounding landscape and the medieval building at its centre.

We will enjoy a splendid picnic lunch, prepared for us by our cooks Caroline and Claire, in the grounds at South Wood.

After lunch, a chance to explore the thirteen acre gardens at Burrow Farm, gradually created by John and Mary Benger since they came to the dairy farm in 1959, taking advantage of sweeping country views, an abandoned clay pit and their interest in unusual trees and shrubs. 

We have a unique invitation to visit Jake Hobson's exquisite and thoughtful Japanese garden, hidden in a Shaftesbury residential street. Afterwards, Jake will lead us to the HQ of fashionable and fabulously practical Niwaki tools, established by Jake right here in Dorset, and demonstrate their range of sharp, shiny stuff from Japan. From hori hori to secateurs, they have tools for every conceivable garden job, all beautifully made by Japanese craftsmen.

After lunch at Holm, with a menu driven by the seasons, the environment, and the beautiful Somerset countryside, we visit East Lambrook Manor. If that sounds familiar, it's because the grade 1 Listed cottage garden was created by the famous writer and horticulturalist, Margery Fish, from 1939 to 1969.

Beautifully evoked in her 1956 bestseller We Made a Garden, her romantic masterpiece appears naturalistic but is, in fact, a study in beautiful colour and texture combinations. She wrote eight books and numerous articles about her garden experiences, popularising gardening for many in a post-war world.

The garden is relatively small but densely planted with a wide variety of plants that bring year-round interest.

After tea at the Manor, we're thrilled to have Dorset's renowned flower painter, Flora Roberts, give us a masterclass in botanical illustration. Inspired by historic textiles and paintings, Flora’s work features in murals, wallpaper and interior textiles, and is always informed by sensitive observation of the flowers in her own garden.

Dorset has a tradition of tiny, informal and productive cottage gardens, whose simple beauty inspired the Edwardian painter Helen Allingham. In just ⅓ of an acre at Corner Cottage, Sue and Colin Dyer maintain a perfect example, with their beautiful kitchen garden, and a small orchard, surrounded by deep flower and shrub borders. 

Our morning visit extends to a mellow old brick-walled garden hidden deep in the Bride Valley. Here the largely perennial borders are arranged in ‘rooms’, laid out in a lovely tumble of naturalised planting down the south-facing slope, together with potager vegetable areas and a large lavender border. The sheltered garden is famous for a profusion of scented roses along the edge of the River Bride, a gin-clear stream which glides through the garden.

We will enjoy a Turkish-inspired picnic in the walled garden of Jason Goodwin’s nearby home before walking the Valley of Stones, a beautiful nature reserve bearing many traces of Dorset’s earliest farmers and settlers.

Buffy Sacher planned her garden on the slopes of the hillfort at South Eggardon to incorporate its sacred springs and the magnificent 2000 year old yew tree, 24’ round at its narrowest point. With far-reaching views out over the Asker valley, threaded by chalk streams running to a landscaped lake, this is a stunning garden that takes full advantage of its ancient setting.

Lunch is at the award-winning Brassica in the peaceful little town of Beaminster.

Jim Bartos is a native New Yorker and noted garden historian, formerly Chairman of the Board of the Gardens Trust. His exquisite gardens at the Old Rectory in Corscombe unfold with a magnificent interplay of exuberance and restraint. A succession of secret ‘rooms’, including one that takes its inspiration from Islamic tradition, epitomises the nature of this tour, full of horticultural surprise. The gardens overlook three counties, and Glastonbury Tor.

This morning we have an invitation to visit Little Benville, a thrilling contemporary garden with design features by Harris Bugg Studio, winners of the Gold and Best in Show at Chelsea in 2023, the go-to new kids on the horticultural block. 

Set in a historic landscape - mentioned in Thomas Hardy's Tess of the d'Urbevilles - Little Benville boasts magnificent herbaceous borders, woodland planting, a walled vegetable and cutting garden, cloud pruned topiary, a ha-ha, ornamental and productive trees and a moat which is a listed Ancient Monument.

Lunch is at the 16th century Acorn Inn, in the stunning and filmic village of Evershot.

In the afternoon we have a private invitation to visit Wall, the remote and romantic home of artist Annie Roberts and her husband, Johnnie. This is the latest in a succession of beautiful gardens Annie has made, with her signature Rosa Rugosa hedging and deep herbaceous borders.

We return to Symondsbury for a valedictory dinner.

Depart Symondsbury Old Rectory after breakfast.