Aspley House, Aspley Guise
The Lord Wolfson

The lovely garden around the wisteria-clad Queen Anne house has been created over the last eight years with the help of Jessica Duncan. Behind the house the ground rises in terraces towards an ancient yew tree and an arched gateway in the brick perimeter wall. On each terrace mixed borders, bursting with roses and perennials, are satisfyingly anchored with clipped box and Santolina. On either side of this central vista lie gardens concealed behind hornbeam and yew hedges. An orchard planted in a grid pattern, its trees under-planted with Alchemilla, is separated by a rose-covered screen from a lawn bounded by wide borders and a row of pleached limes Behind an old brick wall lies the kitchen garden with productive raised beds and a nineteenth century melon house.

Bedford House, Woburn
Henrietta, Duchess of Bedford

Jessica Duncan also advised on the garden at Bedford House, starting in 2002 on what was then a field with some good holm oaks and limes. Around the house, wide terraces are generously planted with standard wisteria, mounds of lavender and happily spreading Russian daisy. A broad lawn leads down to a wide mixed border where roses, Hydrangeas and Cotinus, Acanthus, Stipa and Geraniums enjoy the shelter of a south-facing wall. At the end of the borders a picturesque thatched summer house conceals a door in the perimeter wall which gives onto the woodland walk around the lake on the edge of the park. This had been, until 1938, a wild garden for picnics reached by pony carriages. Abandoned until 2002, the restoration and replanting here has been carried out with great care by Carl Mepham who has opened vistas over the lake and back towards the house.

Glebe House, Southill
Sir Samuel and Lady Whitbread

When the Whitbreads moved six years ago from Southhill House into what had previously been the agent's house, they asked Tom Stuart-Smith to design the garden. This is laid out in a series of vistas that radiate across the garden from the house. A wide grass path, bisected by generous stone steps and flanked with borders, leads to a grove of Robinias contained within beech hedges. From here a long late-summer border leads to the rose garden and a charming thatched pavilion. Beyond the rose garden all becomes informal with winding paths between shrub borders leading to the new woodland garden and pond. All that remains of the original garden is a sunken rectangle enclosed by yew hedges which provides the perfect place for hot-coloured plants that would be out of place elsewhere in the garden.

Meet at Glebe House. Lunch at Bedford House.
John Graham of Steventon Road Nurseries will be selling plants at Bedford House.

Everdon Hall, Little Everdon
Mr and Mrs Charles Coaker

There was no garden at all at Everdon Hall until Charles and Caroline Coaker moved here. With the help of the designer Angel Collins, a magnificent but practical garden has been created. Terraces softened by planting of Artemisia and Sedum have been laid around the house and vistas created with pleached limes and stands of Miscanthus. The old cricket pitch, with some soul-searching, has been transformed into a formal arboretum. The garden really takes off within the old kitchen garden. Here the Coakers have succeeded in their aim of creating a warm, sheltered structural garden, reminiscent of Provence, with mounds of lavender, Santolina, clipped box and yew, softened by Verbena, Perovskia, Cotinus and Roses, including 'Cooper's Burmese' which grows abundantly on a south-facing wall.

Hardwick Hill, Priors Hardwick
Mr and Mrs Diarmaid Kelly

Not that many years ago the garden at Hardwick Hill was overgrown and neglected. However the bones remained and with huge amounts of hard work, Candy Kelly, a garden designer and botanical artist, has created the lovely garden that now surrounds the house. A wide lawn stretches from the terrace towards the ha-ha. A magnificent Corsican Pine draws the eye to the hanging woods on the hill above the house and beyond a screen of pleached Malus, a long border leads to a pavilion placed for the view to the distant Malvern Hills. A new stone wall and established hedges shelter the herbaceous planting below the main lawn. A beautifully maintained vegetable garden, a cutting garden, a fern-clad stumpery and an extensive orchard are among the other delights of this wonderful garden.

Pettifers, Wardington
Mr and the Hon Mrs James Price

Gina Price has been gardening here for 23 years and the garden has evolved as plants have been replaced and borders are re-evaluated. A path leads across the terrace to the main lawn, where a pair of borders lie sheltered under ancient yews. These are planted for interest and excitement from May to October, from the first tulips, through the Alliums, Delphiniums and on to their final flourish of grasses. An arch of Rosa californica 'Plena' stands above the parterre, a satisfying mixture of clipped box, Daphne and Phillyria, and billowing masses of Iris sibirica, Roses, white Agapanthus and Dahlia 'Admiral Rawlings'. A final autumn-flowering border of Miscanthus, Asters and the magnificent rose 'Sally Holmes' leads into the avenue of Malus transitoria–a truly breathtaking spectacle in late spring.

Meet at Everdon Hall. Lunch at Hardwick Hill.
John Graham of Steventon Road Nurseries will be selling plants at Hardwick Hill.

Wollerton Old Hall, Wollerton
Mr and Mrs John Jenkins

The four-acre garden at Wollerton Old Hall has been created over the last 27 years by John and Lesley Jenkins. The garden is formal, laid out with three vistas that lead from the house in a series of spaces with distinct themes and planting. The emphasis throughout is on perennials, always anchored with a firm structure of hedges. The tall pyramids in the Yew Garden and the cushions of box in the Rill Garden, give solidity to the lavish displays of roses and Clematis, Phlox, Monardas, Salvias and Veronicastrums. The furthest parts of the garden become entirely informal as the ground drops into a valley, with plantings of Hydrangeas, Magnolias, Heptacodium, Cornus and Stewartia.

Ruckley Grange, Shifnal
Mr and Mrs Keith Ashbourne

Ruckley Grange was designed by Sir Ernest George in 1904. Little remains of the Edwardian garden apart from a balustrade dividing the formal gardens from the grass tennis court, a lily pond and a summer house. This garden, presided over by clipped golden yews, is now a mass of roses and delphiniums growing with abandon. Below the house a chain of lakes fed by cascades fill the valley, and the bank beyond is planted with trees now in their prime. The Ashbournes have done a huge amount of restoration work on the lakes and woodland over the years, thinning old specimens and planting many acid–loving plants. Margaret has been running a very successful business on the estate making and selling silk flowers. After lunch there will be an opportunity to visit the silk flowers shop.

Preen Manor, Church Preen
Mrs Richard Trevor-Jones

Upon the ruins of a medieval priory, Richard Norman Shaw built a house which, apart from the domestic ranges, was demolished after the First World War. Anne and Philip Trevor-Jones came to Preen in the 1970s and found a garden of lawns and trees, with Norman Shaw's kitchen garden. Yew hedges separate the drive from the garden; an arched entrance gives onto a long vista of a rectangular stone-edged pool and avenue of young trees leading to an urn surrounded by clipped hedges. A magnificent cedar leads the eye towards Wenlock Edge. The kitchen garden is part productive and partly ornamental, with beds bordered with step-over apples and apple arches.

Meet at Preen Manor. Lunch Ruckley Grange.

There are a great many wonderful gardens in Normandy, and the best of them have been created by a new generation of French gardeners, who are hugely skilled in both planting and design. The gardens are very varied in terms of planting and design, but all offer a botanic and horticultural feast.

This is a short three-night tour to allow you to experience the best of these gardens, awash with summer-flowering perennials and shrubs. The tour will be based in Rouen in a three-star hotel with a perfect location in the heart of this very attractive city, next door to the famous cathedral.

On the first day we fly to Paris, arriving in the early afternoon and drive to the Château de Champs de Bataille. The château was almost a ruin when the interior designer Jacques Garcia decided not only to restore the building, which houses his astonishing collection of French eighteenth century furniture, but also the garden, possibly designed by Le Nôtre. The result, both internally and externally, is spectacular. The garden is on a scale reminiscent of Versailles. Clipped hornbeam walls contain swirling parterres of box, urns and statues give vertical emphasis, and gilded fountains enliven the scene before the gardens merge with the horizon.

On the second day we are hugely privileged to be invited to see a very rarely-open garden near Dieppe. This garden combines serious plantsmanship with a strong design. Around the house all is formality. Beyond, the ground falls away towards a wide vista over the garden and the ponds below. Here the owner has indulged his love of rare plants, taking advantage of the deep acidic soil which is uncommon in Normandy. We travel a short distance to a private château. The formal approach to the house across the expansive cour d'honneur, leads into the former kitchens where we find a warm welcome from our hostess and an excellent lunch. Afterwards we will explore the lovely garden, part potager and part ornamental, contained in enclosures of immaculate clipped hedges. In the afternoon we visit the exceptional garden at Les Valérianes. The original garden around the house has lawns and densely planted beds, but across the road the entrance to the newer garden, planted with a cloud of lavender and Verbena bonariensis, conceals an astonishing horticultural surprise.

On the third day we drive to the lovely gardens at the Château de Brécy. These epitomize traditional French gardening, where terraces decorated with clipped box and yew rise behind the château towards wrought-iron gates silhouetted against the sky. From Brecy we travel a short distance to a garden justly classified as a Jardin Remarquable, and winner of the National Best garden award in 2009. After lunch, the owners of a very private and lovely garden have kindly allowed us to visit. The formal area of clipped hornbeam immediately beside the château was designed in the early 1980s by Arabella Lennox-Boyd. Subsequently the garden was extended in a more informal style by the owners, assisted by the French designer Camille Muller.
We return to Rouen for a final night in this delightful city, before catching a morning flight from Paris, arriving back at Heathrow in the early afternoon.

Total Cost: The four days, including three nights at a three-star hotel in Rouen (two people sharing), three lunches (including one picnic), all entrance fees and tours of the gardens and travel by air-conditioned coach (flights to and from Paris are NOT included), will cost £980.00 pp. For anyone requiring the single use of a double room, there will be a supplement of £185.00.

Booking: Please complete the booking form as usual and send it with a deposit of £250.00pp only. We will confirm your places on the tour and send you a final invoice and all further information at the beginning of April.

The Old Rectory, Pulham
Mr and Mrs Nick Elliott

The Old Rectory is a picturesque gothick house standing across the fields from its church. From the terrace on the east side of the house, liberally planted with Alchemilla, Doricnium and Verbena bonariensis, the garden extends past formal box beds, where Portuguese laurel under-planted with Santolina lead to a new ha-ha and the view towards the Dorset Downs. Yew hedges march from the south side of the house towards circular herbaceous borders crammed with Phlox, Persicaria, Lychnis, Veronicastrum and Anemones (to name but a few), at their peak in June, but planted for a long flowering season. Further from the house the garden becomes less formal, with a new bog garden and two woodland gardens where native trees mingle with exotics and flowering shrubs. Image of The Old Rectory, Pulham © Carole Drake

Forest Lodge, Pen Selwood
The Hon. Mr and Mrs James Nelson

The garden at Forest Lodge is comparatively new. It is only after admiring the immaculate design of the Lutyenesque terraces descending in curves to a circular lawn, the pleached hornbeams framing a rill and the large pond, that one takes in the quality of the planting. The terraces, planted with roses and perennials, lead to the Malus orchard, where the under-planting of spring bulbs is followed by later flowering perennials. The informal walks around the pond are filled with acid-loving plants. Lucy grows rarities such as Emmenopteris henryi among the Hamamelis, Stranvesia, Halesia, Eucryphia and Cornus 'Eddie's White Wonder'. Drifts of Primulas and later-flowering Crocosmia border the pond. The planting is punctuated by well-placed sculptures, and above the house giant Irish yews give shelter to an early-flowering spring garden.

Stavordale Priory, Charlton Musgrove

The gardens were transformed by previous owner and garden designer Georgia Langton in the 1980s and have been developed and extended by the current owners since 1993. The sixteenth century priory overlooks a lawn framed by tall Perry Pears under-planted with doughnut cushions of box. Spring-water cascades down a stone-edged rill through an avenue of cider apple trees festooned with Rosa 'Phyllis Bide'. The delight of this garden is to wander and discover: a lavender garden surrounded by tall hornbeam hedges, an orchard under-planted with wild flowers, generous herbaceous borders, woodland gardens, a grotto, a series of lakes with lovely marginal planting, a kitchen and cutting garden and the tranquil cloister gardens. The planting throughout is immaculate and the contrast of formality and informality perfectly judged.

Meet at The Old Rectory, Pulham. Lunch at Forest Lodge.
Marina Christopher of Phoenix Perennial Plants will be selling plants at Forest Lodge.

Farrs, Beaminster
Mr and Mrs John Makepeace

John and Jennie Makepeace moved to Farrs in 2001 and set about the restoration of the house and the garden. Work on the house was finished in 2003, but the garden was only completed in 2008. The garden wraps around the 1730s house in an effective combination of lawns and ancient yew hedges. Beyond the yews lies exactly the sort of garden one would expect from a leading contemporary furniture designer. A slender wooden bridge arches across a pond, set in a sea of grasses, leading to a stone and flint-knapped pavilion. Beyond lies Jennie's garden, a delicious mixture of cutting and kitchen garden, beds crammed with fruit and vegetables and at the far end her studio constructed from straw bales. There will also be an opportunity to see some of John's furniture inside the house.

Parnham House, Beaminster
Mr and Mrs Michael Treichl

The lovely mellow stone Elizabethan house at Parnham had rarely changed hands until the beginning of the twentieth century when it was acquired by Dr Hans Sauer, an associate of Cecil Rhodes. Sauer transformed the garden, adding imposing terraces running down to a newly dug lake. The current owners have restored the house and garden since they acquired it from John Makepeace in 2001. The lake has been dredged and a third terrace added to Sauer's two originals. On the other side of the house, the walled garden has been redesigned with four colour-themed walks around a sunken tennis court. The yew-hedged Ladies Garden, part of the nineteenth century garden layout, has been planted in pink, mauve and grey to complement the colour scheme of the interior of the house.

The Mill House, Netherbury
Mr and Mrs Michael Ryan

Michael and Giustina Ryan moved here in 1993 and found a neglected garden that had the advantages of a mill race and a river. They set about making structure and space to house the flowering shrubs of which Michael is so fond. An old piggery was demolished and a walled garden, inspired by Luytens' garden at Hestercombe, was completed in 1999. A series of informal terraces rise up a steep bank, planted with Hydrangeas, Daphnes, Roses and Geraniums, to a view across the valley towards Netherbury church. Gates lead to an orchard, where plums, pears and Malus are planted, with part of Michael Ryan's collection of Magnolias and other flowering shrubs. The mill stream was cleared of vegetation and two bridges built to cross it and the river beyond, opening up further spaces for a Wellingtonia and several Eucalyptuses.

Meet at The Mill House, Netherbury. Lunch at Coombe Down.

Daylesford House, Moreton-in-Marsh
Sir Anthony and Lady Bamford

Daylesford House was built by 1793 and the orangery, walled garden and lakes were created at the same time. The Bamfords acquired the estate in 1988 and have magnificently restored the garden. The orangery houses a collection of citrus trees with tender Trachelospermum and jasmines on the south-facing wall. Behind the orangery is the Secret Garden, built to mark the Millennium and designed by Rupert Golby. The Scented Walk, planted with Magnolias, Daphnes, lilac and lily-of-the-valley leads to the two-acre walled garden. This spectacular space contains a vegetable garden and fruit garden, as well as two greenhouses, one for peaches and the other housing orchids and the Rose Garden and the Quince Lawn. This is a rare opportunity to see a wonderful eighteenth century garden.

Stone House, Wyck Rissington
Mr and Mrs Andrew Lukas

Katie Lukas, a garden consultant, has over the last 18 years, with her husband Andrew, created this lovely two and a half acre garden around their house looking across the Windrush Valley. The garden is a series of interconnected rooms, each with a different theme or planting style. Borders surround a raised lawn to one side of the house. A sloping garden with two Malus transitoria runs down to a small stream on the other. Roses, thriving in the heavy soil, are everywhere. The style is cottagey with interesting and rare plants rubbing shoulders with good-doers and achieving a perfect balance between the exuberant planting and the sound structure of hedges. This is an inspirational garden as the soil is heavy acid clay and the garden is very cold and wet in the winter.

Banks Fee, Longborough
Mr and Mrs Hugh Sloane

Banks Fee is an elegant house with a spectacular view over the Evenlode valley. The entrance garden was designed by Arne Maynard in his classical topiaried style, with pleached hornbeams and Quercus ilex under-planted with box, rosemary and Santolina. Wisteria-covered steps lead down to a grass terrace, with a border planted with tree peonies, Solanum, Buddleja and grasses. A path descends through a Spring Garden to a terrace by the new glasshouses. The large cutting garden, composed of generous drifts of perennials lies on one side of a wide path and the immaculate vegetable and fruit garden on the other. A curved tunnel of pears leads to an enclosed swimming pool garden designed by Lady Mary Keen. Borders round the pool are filled with Salix exigua, Rosa rugosa, Miscanthus, Romneya and Salvia uliginosa.

Meet at Banks Fee. Lunch at Stone House.
Victoria Logue of Whitehall Plants will be selling plants from her own nursery and Cotswold Garden Flowers.

Fullers Mill, West Stow
Bernard Tickner Esq

The seven acres of garden at Fullers Mill are a plantsman's dream and have been created since 1958 by Bernard Tickner from sandy woodland and rough scrub. The top garden, dry and free-draining, encourages Mediterranean flora and here bulbs and shrubs are planted under the open canopy of trees, particularly Betula 'Silver Grace'. The mill pond was restored with Hydrangea 'Annabelle' and Euphorbia stygiana overlooking plantings of Primulas, Darmera and Lysichiton. The garden is a treasure house of rare and tender plants all of which seem to thrive in this dry soil. In a woodland area Cardiocrinum giganteum var. yunanense, the Giant Himalayan Lily, is well established. Mr Tickner has introduced a number of plants including Euphorbia 'Blackbird' and 'Redwing' which arose in the garden and from the Pyrenees, Fritillaria pyrenaica 'Bernard Tickner'.

Columbine Hall, Stowupland
Mr and Mrs Hew Stevenson

Columbine Hall is a fourteenth century moated house, whose gardens have been developed by Hew and Leslie Stevenson (who is the garden writer, Leslie Geddes-Brown) since 1993. George Carter designed the formal seventeenth century-style layout as well as a number of the outbuildings. The first space is a yew-hedged enclosure with four umbrella-shaped Crataegus prunifolia in the corners. Imposing hornbeam hedges separate the Allée, decorated with urns and benches, from the neighbouring Bowling Green. The sheltered courtyard of the house is awash with pots of Sempervivum and scented-leaved Pelargoniums. A walk around the moat leads to a newly-planted Mediterranean garden and an established fern-filled bog garden. This is a very peaceful ordered garden, predominantly green, around which the Suffolk countryside wraps itself in a quiet embrace, as it has for centuries.

Helmingham Hall, Helmingham
The Lord and Lady Tollemache

There have been Tollemaches at Helmingham since the 1480s. The current Lord and Lady Tollemache have added greatly to the gardens (Xa Tollemache is a Chelsea Gold Medal-winner) putting in the Rose and Knot Gardens in 1982, and developing the walled garden to the west of the house. Inside the walls the moated garden is divided into eight with paths covered in tunnels of sweet peas, Clematis and gourds. The main cross paths are flanked with herbaceous borders backed with climbing roses trained on wires. The perimeter beds are filled with ornamental vegetables, annuals, grasses and shrubs, with peaches, pears and plums trained on the walls. George Carter has designed seats for the south-facing wall and a new bridge, by the late-summer border, which leads across the moat into the orchard and wild flower meadow.

Meet Fullers Mill. Lunch at Columbine Hall.

Kirtling Tower, Kirtling
The Lord and Lady Fairhaven

Kirtling Tower is all that remains of the house built in 1530. Twenty years ago Lord and Lady Fairhaven started to lay out a garden, but the development gained momentum when they moved here from nearby Anglesey Abbey seven years ago. Richard Ayres, former head gardener at the Abbey, advised on the layout. The walled garden was rescued from dereliction and planted with herbaceous perimeter borders and diagonal walks of Crataegus orientalis. A walnut avenue reaches across the park and beyond it a secret garden has been laid out. This garden starts informally with good shrubs and trees (about which Lord Fairhaven is both passionate and knowledgeable), including a beautiful cut-leafed Alnus glutinosa 'Imperialis' and culminates in a formal circle of clipped beech, Elaeagnus ebbingei and fastigiate oaks surrounding a sandstone obelisk.

Ousden House, Ousden
Mr and Mrs Alastair Robinson

Alastair and Lavinia Robinson might be forgiven for settling down to enjoy their wonderful garden, but after 16 years of planning and planting, it is still evolving. Arabella Lennox-Boyd helped at the outset with a planting plan when the Robinsons were starting with a clean slate immediately around the demolished Ousden Hall, where only a clock tower and the old stable block remained. In front of the latter, now their house, they created the first garden: a formal yew-hedged rose garden and herbaceous borders. Later the Robinsons acquired more land and embarked on a far larger scheme. Yews surround the clock tower and march in undulating curves towards gates into the park. Further on the garden becomes more informal: a bog garden fills a former moat; a spring garden is maturing fast; and a beech wood running down to two former monastic ponds has been thinned and brought into the garden.

Denston Hall, Denston
Mrs Richard Macaire

Denston Hall is approached across its park by a fine avenue. Confident blocks of Viburnum and Euonymus contained by tiers of box and yew lead onto a south-facing terrace. A lawn and the richly-planted canal pond separate the house from the walled garden, originally designed by Mark Rumary and later modified by Xa Tollemache. A third of the space is an immaculate fruit, vegetable and cutting garden, the borders contained by box or step-over apples, the east-facing wall sheltering vines and figs. Avenues of Irish yews flank double borders and arches covered in jasmine and Rosa filipes 'Kiftsgate' while hedges shelter the gold and silver gardens. Borders filled with Mahonia, Rodgersias, Hydrangeas and Acanthus run along three of the outside walls, while a Nut Walk occupies the fourth.

Meet at Denston Hall. Lunch at Ousden House.

Milton Park, Peterborough
Sir Philip and Lady Isabella Naylor-Leyland

Milton Park is a Tudor house with substantial eighteenth century additions which was restored following requisition during the Second World War. Work on the garden, which had originally been designed by Repton in the 1790s, began 12 years ago. In the first of the vast walled gardens standard Quercus Ilex and large swathes of white-flowering roses add structure and decoration to an immaculate working kitchen garden. A wrought-iron gate opens into a formal flower garden where wide paths separate borders punctuated by crown-shaped box. A circular lily pool reflects the newly gilded gates which give onto the informal gardens where an orangery looks over a lake. On the entrance front, Repton's park stretches away to the east, and in front of the lovely carriage house pleached limes separate the drive from the panels of grass decorated with simple patterns in box.

The Old Hall, Market Overton
Mr and Mrs Tim Hart

The garden at the Old Hall is entered by a low door in a wall lushly planted with a fig and Garrya and under-planted with great clumps of Hydrangea arborescens 'Annabelle'. Inside, the main garden drops away from the house in four terraces, giving a long view over the undulating Rutland countryside. Urns flank the steps down to the second terrace, where borders surround a central lawn. Two Pinus densiflora 'Umbraculifera' are planted by the steps to the third terrace, where a long border of Rosa 'The Fairy' is planted with Stachys and Caryopteris clandonensis. Before the garden merges into the landscape there is a final flourish of formality as steps lead to a border broken by giant yew buttresses, with a planting of vigorous perennials, including Maclaya, Knifophia and Euphorbia characias.

The Old Vicarage, Burley
Mr Jonathan and Dr Sandra Blaza

The garden at The Old Vicarage has been carefully designed and is immaculately maintained. The formal spaces behind the house, which include the rose and peony garden, a rill garden with standard wisterias, and the spectacular organised kitchen garden, are balanced by the much freer garden in front where the only structure is an avenue of heavily pollarded limes leading to the lawns. The detail of the garden is also first class; walls and steps are beautifully built, the camber of a brick path is a perfect arc. There is humour too: the bust of a Roman Emperor swathed in purple-flowering clematis. The kitchen garden is a spectacular mouth-watering heaven of labelled vegetables, fruit and cutting flowers in timber-framed beds which surround raised stone herb beds and an armillary sphere.

Meet at Milton Park. Lunch at Hambleton Hall.

Hawling Manor, Hawling
Mr and Mrs Kevin Lomax

Hawling lies at the top of the Cotswolds, sheltering in a hollow from the worst of the wind and the weather. The Elizabethan manor stands next to the church, surrounded by handsome stone barns and outhouses and here Kevin and Penny Lomax have created a quite remarkable garden. The entrance is very ordered with double rows of pleached limes framing the house. The formality continues in the main garden; topiary box, yew and whitebeams are clipped into cones, cubes and domes. On the paved main terrace, box hedges encircle a lily pool and standard Viburnum are under-planted with lavender. Herbaceous borders, centred on an imposing copper beech, are punctuated with globes of white-variegated Euonymus. Very elegant bow-fronted walls support the top terrace, which is planted with fastigiated hornbeams.

Upton Wold, Moreton-in-Marsh
Mr and Mrs Ian Bond

Upton Wold is one of the great Cotswold gardens. Designed originally by Hal Moggridge, it has been developed and cared for with huge passion by Ian and Caroline Bond. The garden combines a magnificent location looking over the north Cotswolds, a very firm structure of hedges and walls and skilled and knowledgeable plantsmanship. Clipped yews and hornbeams, are softened by the luxuriance of well-grown perennials. A long border concealed from the main lawn by a yew hedge is brim-full with Phlox and Geraniums, Heucheras and Hostas. The kitchen garden, separated from Ian Bond's National Collection of Walnuts by a tall and windowed hornbeam hedge, is awash with Iris and a tunnel of Malus 'John Downie' is under-planted with clouds of Nepeta.

Bretforton Manor, Bretforton
Mr and Mrs Mark Chambers

Bretforton Manor dates back to 1605 and the garden, where ancient yew trees shelter a square stone dovecote, resonates with its manorial past. The best of the garden lies in the restoration initiated in 2008 by Mark and Angela Chambers, who were advised by the writer and designer Paul Williams. The main focus has been on the walled garden, where an existing lily pond has been reshaped, new borders backed by pleached hornbeam established and walls replanted with fruit trees. Outside the walled garden, borders (flowering from June to October) thrive where previously there were only lawns. Facing the cider barn, a cascade falls into an informal pond under the branches of a weeping willow. A medlar avenue leads towards a new glasshouse on the far bank of the stream that divides the garden.

Meet at Bretforton Manor. Lunch at Upton Wold.
Victoria Logue of Whitehall Plants will be selling plants from her own nursery and Cotswold Garden Flowers.

Spencers, Great Yeldham
Mr and Mrs Colin Bogie

The glory of Spencers is the walled garden which was renovated a few years ago with the help of Tom Stuart-Smith. At the entrance there is a display glasshouse dating from the 1760s, reputedly the oldest in Essex. At the southern end of the garden are an area of wildflower meadow and a clover lawn which is surrounded on three sides by pleached Pyrus Chanticleer. Paths bisect the garden, meeting at a sundial in a circle of yellow–flowered Rosa 'Graham Thomas'. Borders are planted for long seasonal colour and backed by Osmanthus and Rosa pimpinellifolia, Maclaya, and Onorpordum. Sweet peas are grown in profusion along with Delphinium 'Lord Butler' (named after 'Rab' Butler who lived here from 1959 until his death in 1982).

The Parsonage House, Helions Bumpstead
The Hon Mr and Mrs Nigel Turner

Annie and Nigel Turner have been gardening around this exquisite Tudor house for over 20 years. At the front of the house an informal mixture of Verbena bonariensis, Valerian, Euphorbia myrsinites, Rosa mutabilis and a weeping Caryopteris grow at the feet of Compassion and Blairii No 2 roses. Behind the house exuberantly filled borders are balanced by immaculate box and yew. A charming pavilion dominates the enclosed swimming pool garden and the remaining stretch of moat is planted with marginal and damp-loving plants. The horticultural rarities which are so casually fitted into the garden (Acnistus australis, Rostinucula dependens, Buddleja glomerata "Silver Service") ensure that garden visitors are kept on their botanic toes. Annie's greatest enthusiasm is her collection of East Anglian apples, growing in two ancient fields, varieties grown include, 'The Bloody Ploughman', 'Sandringham' and 'Lord Burleigh'.

Feeringbury Manor, Feering
Mr and Mrs Giles Coode-Adams

Giles and Sonia Coode-Adams moved here in 1978 and were confronted by old chicken houses in a sea of nettles. They have created, while Giles was Chief Executive of the Kew Foundation and then President of the RHS, a lovely rambling garden sloping down to the River Blackwater. From the terrace, crammed with pots of Pelargoniums and tender Salvias, a semi-circle of yews shelters mixed borders which flower well into the autumn. Paths vanish into the garden, either into an avenue of apple trees via an imposing ironwork arch and gate, one of a number of sculptures designed by their son Ben Coode-Adams, or to meander down the chain of ponds to the river and the arboretum. A Cedrus atlantica Glauca overhangs the top pond and a rose border, now augmented with perennials, is backed by a metalwork screen.

Meet at Feeringbury Manor. Lunch at The Parsonage House.

Gresgarth Hall, Caton
The Hon. Sir Mark and Lady Lennox-Boyd

The twelve-acre garden around Gresgarth Hall has been developed over the last 20 years by Arabella Lennox-Boyd. From the house terraces adorned with old roses, Mediterranean plants, stone planters and pots in profusion descend to the Artle Beck on one side and to a lake on the other. A spring walk beside the beck, thick with hellebores and Pulmonarias, leads to the water garden and on to the kitchen garden. A large open circle of yews leads back to the herbaceous borders by way of an enclosed garden, planted with greys and decorated with a cobbled pavement by Maggie Howarth. Across the beck serpentine beech hedges reach into the woodland garden towards a ruined tower that featured in one of Arabella Lennox-Boyd's Chelsea gardens. This is a garden that beautifully combines Italian style with British plantsmanship. Image of Gresgarth Hall © Arabella Lennox-Boyd.

Lawkland Hall, Lawkland
Mr and Mrs Giles Bowring

The seventeenth century Lawkland Hall, standing on the edge of the Yorkshire Dales, presents a formidable challenge to the gardener. The garden that the Bowrings inherited has been developed and softened over the last ten years by Diss Bowring who trained at Merrist Wood. A stone terrace runs across the south side of the house which allows for sheltered planting. Cone-shaped yews lead the eye across the lawn towards the lake and the woodland, through which a vista has been carved. A mixed border of blues, purples and dark red runs down one side of the lawn in front of a yew hedge which conceals two further gardens; a pink garden by the square stone potting shed, and a rose garden with apples trained on arches over the central path and borders under-planted with perennials. A heather-thatched summer house provides the focal point.

Park House, Barbon
Mr and Mrs Philip Pattison

The heather-covered fells rising steeply behind Park House make a dramatic backdrop. The house has undergone many changes, but most significantly since the 1980s when the present layout of the garden was started. The current owners, Philip and Diane Pattison, have completed the work with the help of locally-based designer Belinda Belt. The house sits on a broad flagged terrace with an oak balustrade. Below the terrace a long border is filled with Alliums, Geraniums, Astrantia, lupins, Cardoons and Campanula latiloba. A double crinkle-crankle yew hedge separates the main lawn from the enclosed sunken garden. To one side lies the restored kitchen garden, which boasts grand stone raised beds. In contrast to the formality around the house, a wild garden across the lane is bordered by a beck which has been dammed to create an enchanting, tree-fringed pool.

Meet at The Village Hall, Bardon. Lunch at Lawkland Hall.

Littlethorpe Manor, Nr Ripon
Mr and Mrs John Thackray

Littlethorpe is a late-Regency house, but the eleven-acre garden has been extensively re-landscaped since 1998 for the present owners. Immediately behind the house is a sunken white garden, with a pattern of box hedges enclosing Santolina, Pyrus salicifolia and the white polyantha rose 'Katharina Zeimet'. Beyond is the old walled garden, now transformed into an ornamental garden with a central gazebo supporting honeysuckle and Rosa 'Frances E Lester'. A pergola leads through a blue and yellow border towards the front of the house. Here lawns which previously sloped have been levelled, Irish yews frame an ornamental pool and steps lead down to an avenue of red-twigged limes. Across the lake, and surrounded by spectacular planting, is an eye-catcher in the form of a classical temple. This is a spectacular garden, imaginatively planted and beautifully maintained.

Mount St John, Felixkirk
Mr and Mrs Chris Blundell

The house at Mount St John stands on the edge of the Hambleton Hills with a magnificent view across the Vale of York. Tom Stuart-Smith was given the difficult task of creating a garden on the sloping ground below the house, always competing with that view. This he has achieved so spectacularly that one becomes utterly engrossed by the garden. Stone terraces level off the ground into a series of borders filled with great billowing masses of perennials, anchored in place by large box spheres and beech clipped into mushrooms. To one side of the house a valley was originally filled with monastic ponds which have been restored and linked by cascades. The margins of the pools and the sides of the valley have been entirely replanted. Elsewhere, in this garden of impeccably high standards, are an immaculate vegetable garden, cutting garden and glasshouses.

Sleightholmedale Lodge, Fadmoor
Dr and Mrs Oliver James

There can be few places lovelier than Sleightholmedale and rarely does a garden gives as much pleasure as this one. Set on a west-facing side of a shallow valley of the North York Moors, a series of terraces carry the garden from the house towards the fields. But it is the rose garden that astonishes. Stone paths run steeply uphill through great masses of Eryngium, Delphinium, Digitalis, Persicaria, Oenothera, Onopordum and Verbascum. The roses 'American Pillar', 'Hiawatha' and 'Minnehaha' are all a hundred years old and going strong, and among them areas of vegetable garden blend happily with the voluptuous summer planting. Along the topmost walk pink-flowered Clematis texensis, Clematis 'Black Prince' and a swaggering mass of hollyhocks run riot along the top of the garden.

Meet at Sleightholmedale Lodge. Lunch at Felixkirk.

A Charity Day in aid of St James's Church, Clapton-on-the-Hill. The 12th century church of St James is our village church and one of the smallest in the Cotswolds. It has an unusual 13th century inscription carved into the chancel arch promising the indulgence of a thousand days relief from Purgatory.

Highgrove
HRH The Prince of Wales

The gardens at Highgrove have been created by the Prince of Wales since 1980. Over the years a galaxy of horticultural stars has advised on the layout, design and planting. These include Lady Salisbury, Roy Strong, Rosemary Verey, Miriam Rothschild and Julian and Isabel Bannerman. The garden, run entirely organically, is made up of a number of individual spaces with different planting themes and designs. These range from the walled kitchen garden where rare and endangered varieties of fruit and vegetables are grown, through the wonderful stumpery, to the formal spaces immediately around the house, which include the enclosed sundial garden and the Islamic garden.

Througham Court
Dr Christine Facer Hoffman

Througham Court must be one of the most exciting and challenging gardens in the country. Inspired by both her background as a scientist and the work of her friend Charles Jencks, the garden illustrates mathematical theories, particularly the Fibonacci Sequence and a number of key formulae that govern the working of the universe. The Arts and Crafts layout of yew hedges and sunken gardens (by the Cotswold architect Norman Jewson) merges blissfully with 21st century science, all arranged with huge charm and great style in a memorable garden around an impressive 17th century Cotswold stone house.

The day will include a tour of the garden at Highgrove which will last for approximately two and a half hours and lunch at Througham Court followed by a tour of Christine Facer's inspiring garden.

Transport to and from Highgrove will be by your own car and further details of transport arrangements, security requirements and directions to Througham will be given on booking.

It is not possible to confirm the date of this tour until mid-February 2012, but as the number of places is limited, I would be grateful if anyone who wishes to join the tour could contact me before Tuesday 1st February to declare an interest.

Once I have a confirmed date from Highgrove, I shall contact (preferably by email) all who have expressed an interest. Places will be given in the strict order in which I receive a completed booking form and payment in full for the day. Cheques should be made payable to St James's Church, Clapton.

The cost of the day, which includes a contribution to The Prince of Wales's Charitable Foundation and lunch, will be £140.00 per person, with all proceeds going to St James's Clapton-on-the-Hill.