Unforgettable Gardens

4 weekly online talks, Wednesdays @ 7 starting January 6th, £5 each or all 4 for £16.

This ticket is for the entire course of 4 sessions or you may purchase a ticket for individual sessions via the links below.

Attendees will be sent a Zoom link 2 days prior to the start of each talk (If you do not receive this link please contact us), and a link to the recorded session will be sent shortly after each session and will be available for 1 week.

Northants is blessed with many wonderful heritage gardens and landscapes, and Northamptonshire Gardens Trust have kindly agreed to share with us 4 of their Unforgettable Gardens to brighten up our January which include the Nation's Favourite Garden as voted by garden visitors in conjunction with The English Garden magazine and NGS; the garden of a great estate continuously lived and gardened by the same family for over 500 years; a fascinating and significant garden relic from a troubled time in history; and the walled garden of one of the most impressive mansions in England. Join us and make plans for Unforgettable Garden visits in this great county.

6th Jan Lyveden New Build: David Marsh

Lyveden is the creation of Sir Thomas Tresham, a devout Catholic who spent much of his later life in the Tower for his faith. It is, as the National Trust says, “a poignant and dramatic example of one man standing up for his beliefs in dangerous times, through an act of quiet and creative rebellion” Left unfinished on his death in 1605 the roofless lodge and its elaborate water gardens were not just meant to be beautiful but deeply spiritual and symbolic of his beliefs. Rightly listed at Grade 1, Lyveden is the most significant surviving garden of its era and definitely a good candidate to the first in this year’s lectures about Unforgettable Gardens.

13th Jan: Coton Manor and Colour in the Garden: Susie Paysley-Tyler

The garden at Coton Manor was created nearly a hundred years ago by Susie’s husband’s grandparents and following the previous two generations, they have been living and gardening here for the last thirty years. She says: ‘We inherited a mature garden with wonderful trees, hedges, views, natural water and imaginative planting. The layout of the garden on a downward slope lends itself to many different and varied aspects. Over many years of trial and error I have taken advantage of this by using different plants and colours to evoke a change of mood or atmosphere as one moves through the various parts of the garden. I am particularly interested in colour, but it only becomes successful when other dimensions such as structure, texture, flower timing and of course plant selection are given equal weight. So my talk will centre on how I perceive the value of colour in the garden’.

20th Jan: Burghley Walled Garden: Joe Whitehead

Gardening figures highly in Joe’s family and he’s the third generation to follow the path into this most wonderful career. He tells us: ‘Obsessive compulsive walled kitchen gardening! There is no cure thankfully! Over the last few decades I’ve also been lucky enough to be able to indulge my passion for walled gardens and here at Burghley we are about to again breathe life into another lost world hidden behind high walls’.

Joe trained at RHS Wisley and during his career has worked at Burghley House, Salle Park, Raveningham Hall and Blatherwycke Park where he brought the walled garden back to life. He has now returned to Burghley House as Head Gardener, where the walled kitchen garden is actually sited in Northamptonshire.

27th Jan: Deene Park, A family’s park and garden for five hundred years: Charlotte Brudenell

Charlotte will talk to us about the history and development of her family’s treasured landscape, Deene Park. The Brudenell family have lived there in continued succession since 1514 and Deene Park is lucky to have a host of maps that display how the gardens have evolved since then. Charlotte will focus on some of the more well documented stages showing how the gardens have reflected the house and its place in history over the past five centuries. Much work was carried out in the 20th century after the ravages of the World Wars and the subsequent requisitioning. More gardens have evolved in the 21st century leading to the Head Gardener’s plea of ‘Please not another one’!