This is a real plantsman s garden, full of interest all year round, and especially from April until October. The fine eighteenth-century red-brick house is protected from the road by a vast undulating cloud hedge of yew and box. Behind the house five acres of garden slope up through the exemplary mirror-image herbaceous borders, planted with over one hundred genera and reaching their peak in June with nepetas, geraniums, tradescantias, Clematis x diversifolia 'Hendersonii' and galegas, followed by yellows and then the russets of late summer. The way forward towards dianthus and roses, leads to the wrought-iron gates of the walled kitchen garden, filled with a well-ordered abundance of fruit and vegetables, a special collection of old-fashioned sweet peas and a mass of herbaceous flowers. Beyond a second wrought-iron gate lies the orchard with its curving tapestry hedge of alternating box and yew, flowering cherries, and fruit trees underplanted with daffodils. Trees on the eastern side include Ginko biloba, Maytenus boaria, Davidia involucrata, magnolias and fine specimens of Staphylea colchica AGM. Spring brings to the garden carpets of aconites, crocuses, snowdrops and other early bulbs, autumn a large collection of tender and hardy nerines.