Secret Gardens of East Anglia: A Private Tour of 22 Gardens

The big skies and the extraordinary light of East Anglia make it unlike anywhere else in Britain, and offer the most amazing natural conditions in which to create gardens.

The twenty-two gardens selected for Secret Gardens of East Anglia celebrate the culture, beauty and diversity of the counties of Suffolk, Norfolk, Cambridgeshire and Essex, and all deserve to be better known.

Introduced by eminent East Anglian plantswoman Beth Chatto, the gardens appearing on these pages are brought to life by the award-winning author and photographer team of Barbara Segall and Marcus Harpur. From each garden we can learn about the creator’s style, their talent for exploiting the genius loci, and the specific challenges and rewards they have encountered.

Featured gardens include:

• Barnards Farm – A modern sculpture garden amid unwieldy surroundings
• Columbine Hall – A moated garden with a series of green rooms
• East Ruston Old Vicarage – Exuberantly exotic planting in a prairie landscape
• Elton Hall – Formal hedging around turrets, towers and chimneys
• Helmingham Hall Gardens – A gem of a garden hidden in its own moated island
• Hoveton Hall – A watery wildlife haven in an English landscape park
• Hunworth Hall – Anglo-Dutch style gardens for an 18th century house
• Kirtling Tower – A field of daffodils for a Tudor gatehouse
• Parsonage House – Achetypal English gardens around a timber-framed house
• Pensthorpe Natural Park – Naturalistic planting for a waterbird sanctuary
• Polstead Mill – Playful foliage, boisterous borders and a glorious potager
• Raveningham Hall – Exquisite planting in the RHS president’s
• private garden
• Silverstone Farm – A designer’s garden with architectural topiary
• The Manor, Hemingford Grey – A romantic scented garden with a literary past
• The Manor House, Fenstanton – Garden rooms on Capability Brown’s private estate
• 38 Norfolk Terrace- A tiny, theatrical walled garden in the middle of Cambridge
• Tinkers Green Farm – A decorative vegetable garden in a framework of box and yew
• Ulting Wick – Thousands of tulips against a backdrop of black wooden barns
• Wickham Place Farm – Wisteria flourishing on a centuries old garden wall
• Winterton Lighthouse – A lush yet restrained garden framing a lighthouse
• Wood Farm – A marvellous eight acre wildflower meadow
• Wyken Hall – Vines and roses around an Elizabethan manor house