In addition to the Walled Garden is the more formally designed Italian Garden, close to the actual castle. The garden was laid out by Countess Cecilia, the Queen Mother’s mother, c.1910 to designs by Arthur Castings. The fan-shaped parterres of formal beds are separated by gravel walks. Between the two gardens lies the Pinetum which was planted c.1870 and has a variety of exotic trees, many native to North America.
Other features include pleached alleys of beech, a stone fountain and ornamental gates which commemorate the Queen Mother’s 80th birthday.
Pleached beech trees
Like most formal Italian gardens there is a fair amount of statuary here.
And in September the beds were full of colourful dahlias of all sorts of shapes and sizes.
IF YOU ENJOY A WALK, LONG OR SHORT, THEN HAVE A LOOK AT JO’S SITE WHERE YOU ARE WELCOME TO JOIN IN WITH HER MONDAY WALKS.
Earth laughs in flowers 
J & D > Oh that’s a lovely sunny stroll round the garden with you!
It was a splendid day 🙂
The dahlias are gorgeous.
Hiya honeybun! 🙂 🙂 Apart from watching rather disappointing tennis I seem to have frittered the day away doing odd jobs. It’s poured all day and I’ve had issues with sharing the walks on Facebook so my apologies for getting here a bit late. The sculptures are rather wonderful and you can’t keep a good dahlia down, can you? I’m not so keen on pleaching. Lovely shots, Jude. Many thanks!
Makes me rather cross that these players who are obviously not fit enough to play are allowed to take part. Fed and Novak an easy round for them. I have been more animated by the women today plus pootling in the garden and weeding… again. How come I can fill so many bags of weeds each week?Started overcast here but the sun burned through and it got quite hot!
Cultivating weeds? Must be that fabulous Cornish climate! Mick only weeds once every couple of weeks. 🙂
Self-seeding forget-me-nots and herb robert everywhere! Nasturtiums. Brambles from next door (both sides) buttercups, silver-weed, creeping cinquefoil, nettles (though I leave those for the wildlife) and all sorts of stuff that comes in from the hedgerows! Life in the country heh!
You’ll have to move! 🙂 🙂
Hah!
Did you like the pleached beech? I usually do but these straight lines don’t work for me. I like the gate though and the bears breeches are fab!
Not really, though I do like the pleached lime walk at Sissinghurst. I’m not keen on the way this meets in the middle forming a canopy. I’m not a huge fan of formal gardens anyway, prefering the naturalistic look like Piet Oudolf designs.
I learned a new word here today – pleached. It’s just not something I see here very often – like never.
I was amused by the statement “exotic trees, many native to North America”. It’s funny how something that may be common to us is exotic to someone else … like pleached trees 😉
I like to discover some statues, hidden behind a bush or around a corner, it’s always nice and make a visit at a garden much more interesting! beautiful pictures!
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You had a beautiful day for this walk, and the dahlias look gorgeous. If only I didn’t associate them with earwigs, I might be tempted to try growing them.
Me too! I think S&S like them too so another reason for me not to grow them. I seem to have had a lot of earwigs around this summer, didn’t notice any last year.
I haven’t seen an earwig for years, luckily – I find them quite creepy. 😦