Hestercombe House Gardens

An eighteenth century park with a nineteenth century house, by E W Portman, and a great twentieth century garden. The landscape park has lakes, temples and woods. The Arts and Crafts garden, by Edwin Lutyens and Gertrude Jekyll has a sunken parterre, a water garden and a large pergola on the garden boundary. The Oxford Companion to Gardens observes that 'Hestercombe is remarkable for the bold, concise pattern of its layout, and for the minute attention to detail everywhere to be seen in the variety and imaginative handling of contrasting materials, whether cobble, tile, flint, or thinly coursed local stone'. Gertrude Jekyll's planting was restored from the old plans.