Autumn Sundays at Hole Park Gardens

Hole Park Gardens in Kent are renowned for their beauty all year round including spectacular autumn colour when the gardens extend their opening to include Autumn Sundays on 4th, 11th, 18th & 25th October in addition to Wednesdays and Thursdays until 28th October 2021.

The stunning exotic border is full of vibrant colours in October including cannas and dahlias. The late flowering agapanthus ‘Hole Park Blue’ can also be seen in the formal gardens.

The magnificent mature trees and Japanese Maples provide striking autumn colour at this time of year around the 16 acre gardens and 10 acre woodland.

Visitors can enjoy a circular walk which takes walkers past a delightful carved wooden sculpture of a family of bears climbing a tree to reach a honey pot and also a renovated ‘Ice House’ which was built in around 1740 to store ice long before the days of refrigeration. When the ice was cut and stacked it would last for up to three years in this cool environment!

Lunches, aafternoon tea with homemade cakes will be available in the coach house tearoom where there is also a plant stall selling a varied selection of plants to take home. Jam, preserves, beer and apple juice from the Hole Park Estate are also available.

For more information on Hole Park Gardens, please visit www.holepark.com or call 01580 241344 or e-mail events@holepark.com

Hole Park is situated 4 miles west of Tenterden on the B2086 between Rolvenden and Cranbrook.

A family owned estate, Hole Park has been owned by the Barham family for the past four generations. The gardens manage to combine formalised gardens with natural woodland. They cover some 16 acres and were developed, laid out and planted by Colonel Barham, the great-grandfather of the present owner, in the years between the two World Wars.

Hole Park is now owned and managed by Edward Barham, and much of what can be seen today is due to the contribution made by Edward’s father, David Barham, who still takes an active interest in its future today.

The garden is renowned for beautifully clipped topiary and great yew hedges which provide shelter for the lawns and splendid borders. The walled garden contains mixed borders, pools and a water garden. Marvellous climbing plants also provide a fine display here. The natural garden has bulbs, azaleas, rhododendrons and flowering shrubs.

There is a woodland bluebell walk and, in the autumn, the foliage colour is spectacular. Hole Park has many fine trees and the garden is surrounded by superb parkland with wonderful views across the Kentish Weald.

Formal gardens surround the house. Walls and yew hedges, which are a particular feature of Hole Park, shelter broad expanses of lawns. Clipped entirely by hand, it is claimed that nowhere in the county can yews be seen trimmed to greater precision. Fountains and a swimming pool, the egg pond, the walled rose garden, herbaceous borders and wrought iron gates all contribute to make a series of gardens within a garden, united by the lawns, while outwards there are lovely views of the Weald over the surrounding 250 acres of finely timbered parkland.

At the rear of the house, beyond a beech hedge measuring six feet thick and 12 feet high, lies the Policy, massed with daffodils in April with its heathers, flowering trees and shrubs, banks of rhododendrons and azaleas. Amongst the trees can be seen collections of birch, juniper, cypresses and fine oaks. Rhododendrons, camellias, magnolias and primulas are all here in abundance and further plantings are now being made to adjoining woodlands.