Garden details

Telephone

01270 882961

Location

Admission

Garden only: Adults £4; OAPs £3. RHS members free (Member 1 only). For tickets and special offers please visit the website.

Features

• Bluebells
• Herbaceous plants
• Camellias
• Daffodils
• Disabled facilities
• Fruit of special interest
• Herbs
• Rhododendrons
• Rock garden
• Snowdrops
• Vegetables

Comment

Stand on the terraces at Rode Hall and take in the prospect: William Andrews Nesfield's 1860s rose garden and Humphry Repton's landscape beyond. The 'pool' is nearly a mile long and 150 yards (137m) wide. But horticulture is also here in abundance: take the boathouse walk past the old stew pond (pretty marginals and a waterfall) to the wildflower garden (terraced rock garden - early 19th-century - very early for this sort of garden) where snowdrops, sarcococcas, hellebores (lots), ferns, primroses and soldanellas flourish in the lee of rhododendrons. Note the splendid Loderi crosses, which smell of sugared almonds and extend the flowering season into early June. Admire Professor Pratt's scented azaleas (would that more people knew and grew them) and note how the plantings of rhododendron species are being extended into the adjacent Old Wood. Inspect the new Italian garden that is being developed in the ruins of the old Tenants' Hall. Then visit the walled kitchen garden (about two acres) and see the rows of decorative vegetables set between cornflowers, poppies, marigolds and flowers for drying. Espaliered fruit trees cover the walls between 4m abutilons: Cheshire has a mild climate. Look inside the greenhouses and see the many geraniums with scented leaves. And ponder the industry of the head gardener, Kelvin Archer, who grows over 40 cultivars of gooseberry here and holds the world record for the largest gooseberry fruit.