Hampton Court Castle

 Although Herefordshire was chosen as a place to visit for a garden tour, it was the Laskett Gardens which influenced the choice of area, but not our first garden to visit because of the opening times. Hampton Court Castle was the first garden we visited and we weren't disappointed. 

The house and gardens date back to 1434. Hampton Court shares its name with the royal palace on the Thames in Surrey. Licence to build this house was granted to Sir Rowland Leinthall by Henry VI about seventy years before Cardinal Wolsey began his Tudor palace. Their histories have intersected, over the years. The manor, 'Hantone' was mentioned in the Domesday Book, 'Hampton' here referring to a settlement at the confluence of two rivers, the River Lugg, and the Humber Brook. Over the centuries, the grounds have shrunk somewhat from the thousand acres they were in 1434. They have been subject of course to many different influences over the years.

The gardens are maintained to a very high standard with many beautiful features such as the the water staircase and pavilion found in the Flower Garden seen below in the first photograph. There are two pavilions surrounded by four different features, not exactly mirror images of each other, in fact it's probably a good idea to add a photo of the plan of the Flower Garden because it's not obvious when you visit but well worth looking at to gain some idea of the splendour of the plan.

This is another side of the pavilions, known as a Water Pavement

Here's the plan of the Flower Garden taken from the book about the gardens by Catherine Beale and David Wheeler; well worth reading to find out more about this splendid garden.

There are also herbaceous borders looking a lot more informal, but still magnificent

Below you can see the brick wall and lots of silver eryngiums dotted along the border

Hampton Court Castle is also very imposing and important looking with a good number of large trees in the grounds.

Below is one end of the Wisteria Tunnel, not seen in its full glory when we visited in July.

Eryngiums have been fabulous this year, so I enclosed a close up of them

There's also a Sunken Garden with steps leading to it, 

a pond with a waterfall and a tunnel leading to a tower and maze

This was a charming part of the garden 

Below you can see the stones forming a floor inside the small hut from where you can see the waterfall

and here is the waterfall in its full glory. We did try going into the maze, but time was short and we hoped to get an ice cream before the place closed, so hastily tried to retrace our steps rather than going for the full experience.

The first garden of the tour proved to be a great success and we looked forward to planning the next garden visits from the comfort of our great B&B, Grove Farm at Kimbolton, near Leominster