Garden details

Telephone

01226 776040

Location

Admission

Adults £4.95; Concessions £3.95; Children (5-16) £2.95. Discounts for groups. RHS members free (Member 1 only), except during special events, but there is a payment for the car park.

Features

• Camellias
• Disabled facilities
• Glasshouses
• Rhododendrons
• Rock garden

Comment

Wentworth Castle has a major landscape garden, one of the earliest in England, which accounts for the amazing series of buildings in the grounds - among them are an Ionic rotunda, the Gothic folly of Stainborough Castle, an obelisk to Queen Anne and another to Lady Mary Wortley-Montagu to commemorate her introduction of smallpox inoculation to England. The garden was then overlaid with a seriously important collection of hardy hybrid rhododendrons at the end of the 19th century. It was in the same era that the handsome cast-iron conservatory was built. Near the imposing Palladian house is the Union Jack garden, which commemorates the Act of Union of 1707, an azalea garden and a newly rediscovered rock garden. Elsewhere are a stumpery, a formal Victorian garden, and the longest dahlia border in England. The garden is also acquiring a large number of hydrangeas, which may one day turn into another National Collection. There are also plans to restore the 2.5-ha walled garden and the Serpentine. Herds of both red and fallow deer graze in the parkland.