15 acres of garden and parkland surround one of England's best preserved and most beautiful Palladian houses which had its heyday in the late 19th century and has featured more recently in a number of films and TV programmes, not least Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. Of particular note to the west of the house is the vast sunken Dutch Garden, which, although destroyed in a flood in 1973, has been restored by the National Trust to the splendour of the original design of the 1st Lord Newton, with its central fountain and intricate design of seasonal plantings edged in ivy.

In a rather unforgiving climate the Orangery was of especial importance and the one at Lyme, designed by Lewis Wyatt in 1815 and remade by Alfred Derbyshire in 1865, does not disappoint, even containing a fig tree and two spectacular camellias from the Victorian era. It is fronted by terrace beds displaying Penstemon 'Rubicundus', first raised at Lyme in 1906. There is a smaller sunken garden to the north commemorating the Hon. Vicary Gibbs, a famous gardener and friend of the 2nd Lord Newton, which contains several plants named after him and his garden in Hertfordshire.

The garden features a large lake designed to reflect the view of the house and there are many fine trees to be found in a design which leads the eye to the Lanthorn Tower folly. Rhododendrons, azaleas and ferns abound in the area known as Killtime.

A 'deer' park of almost 1400 acres surrounds the property offering a diverse range of moorland, parkland and woodland habitats.