This garden has been described as embodying 'all that is best in modern gardening' which includes formal gardens, summer flowering borders, drifts of spring bulbs, topiary, and a garden in the wood bursting with rare trees and shrubs underplanted with woodland bulbs and herbaceous plants. The gardens nearest the house are the formal areas: terraces, a paved garden, and amusing topiary cut in the yew hedge and the pool garden, with its round pond overlooked by a Victorian sculpture of a bather and a Weeping Silver Pear Tree.

Knightshayes' most famous planting is the Garden in the Wood. Camellia and azalea are underplanted with geranium, hellebore, trillium and pulmonaria. Magical glades display tree magnolia and rhododendron and an arboretum of ornamental trees such as clethra, aralia and acer. The walled kitchen garden (near the stables) being restored as an exemplar of modern organic gardening practice.