What our visitors say

Alan Titchmarsh said “The Wow factor is here in abundance”

In Spring 2006, The Daily Mail reviewed the gardens as among the 10 best in the country.

Visitors often write to express their opinion of the gardens and we’ve even had a poem sent in. We hope you like it as much as we did:

This tranquil place,
where grow the lily and the rose,
lush-lawned, box-formed:
whispered by waters,
sweet with scented phlox,
candled around with hollyhocks,
confines within it Beauty’s resting place:
A gentle garden, green, and full of grace,
that offers shade and sunlight,
light and dark; pleached pears,
and cordoned apples, gilly-flowers.
Here is the place to pass some summer hours
to hear the buzz of bees, the water’s song,
beside the yew-hedge and the ancient stone.
Such beauty: such a scented Paradise
within the bounds of this old Abbey lies –
no wonder then, within this Eden
Adam and Eve, in innocent undress,
tend to the flowers, and sculpt the wilderness!