The secrets of Dorset’s finest private gardens

Our writer meets the great names behind some of the country’s loveliest grounds

“I walked into this garden and I gasped,” said Simon Tiffin. “I thought, ‘What have I been doing with my life?’” 
A former magazine editor, Tiffin hadn’t been looking for inspiration. But the Dorset garden of the American artist John Hubbard changed everything.
Hubbard bought Chilcombe in 1970, from two estranged brothers who lived in separate parts of the house. Gradually, while continuing to make art, Hubbard transformed the bleak farmyard and adjacent land into a garden of exquisite beauty. Smitten by what Hubbard had achieved, Tiffin moved from London to Dorset. Learning from neighbours whose gardens are among the finest in England – including Hubbard, who died in 2017 – Tiffin gradually became an accomplished gardener himself. 
Now, twice a year he breaks away from mowing the nettly orchard, feeding chickens and propagating dahlias to run exclusive, week-long garden tours of those fine neighbouring gardens, with his friend and neighbour, the author Jason Goodwin. 
This year, in May, guests were taken to look around Ashington, the 16th-century home of Julian and Isabel Bannerman, garden designers by appointment to the King; Farrs, home of furniture maker John Makepeace and his wife Jenny; and Mapperton, home to the Earl and Countess of Sandwich. Not forgetting Chilcombe, and much else too. 
I joined them with my wife, to take pictures, while others travelled, to learn and be inspired, from as far as Australia and the Rocky Mountains in the western United States. 
Each day, we threaded the narrow roads of Dorset in a luxury minibus, driven by Goodwin, who entertained with over-the-shoulder storytelling. He took us to gardens in villages and gardens in the back of beyond, hilly gardens and flat ones, and gardens that had previously been an abbey, a fir tree plantation and a 1950s motor garage. One, after 50 years in one family, remained very much a cheerful work in progress, while another had been created almost from nothing in just five years. 
In each place, our small group was privileged to be taken around in person by the garden’s creators. We became familiar with the welcoming statement: “You should have been here last week, when the X was still in flower.” But this being May, we could hardly be disappointed, because there was always something else blooming vividly. Sometimes we met family members too, and as often as not we also went inside the house (try doing that under the National Gardens Scheme).
And each afternoon, we returned together to Symondsbury Manor, outside Bridport, for tea and cake on the terrace, and then dinner around a long table. In this relaxed context, gardening insights arose naturally – not forced, like early rhubarb, in a classroom setting or online course.
One night, early in the week – over ratatouille with whipped feta, grilled halloumi, and slow-roasted tomatoes on flatbread, followed by pecan and raspberry frangipane – Americans and Australians who garden in desert conditions wondered, entirely reasonably, what they could really learn from the lush green gardens of Dorset. 
But as the week proceeded, they (re)discovered basic principles that can be applied to any garden: not just landscaping, colour, and the mix of light and shade, but also basic principles that have more to do with attitude – such as the willingness to try things, and to let go when they don’t work. 
Most days, between garden visits, we lunched at a restaurant. At one, Brassica in Beaminster, my neighbour – a woman with a large garden in Northamptonshire – asked if I had a garden in London.  
“I do,” I said. “But it’s very small.” 
She replied that she’d like to see pictures, which may have been mere politeness, but I was troubled: my garden is not only small but also somewhat neglected. I resolved to throw myself into it as soon as I returned home.
Her question wasn’t intended as a challenge; participants on the course were uniformly modest. And my awkwardness is hardly unique: all gardeners want a garden to be seen in its best shape. Even the great John Makepeace got up early (his wife Jenny confided) to dredge pondweed from beneath their elegant bridge, in anticipation of our group’s arrival that morning. 
One of the most satisfying lessons, for me, was to see that some couples garden together (the Bannermans, for example), while others garden separately, in different areas (John Makepeace creates open spaces with clean lines, while Jenny’s garden is busy with different shapes, textures and colours). 
It was thrilling to glimpse these minor differences in approach, just as it was a privilege to learn where the best gardeners source gazebos (from a man who had built one just like it for someone at the Chelsea Flower Show), planters (Wells reclamation), and thermostatic bubble-wrap polytunnels, as well as mature trees (Majestic) and bulk orders of certain smaller plants (“Sarah Raven,” said one, gruffly). 
As the week went on, our group shared these bits of information, along with photos and plant names, in a private WhatsApp group; and over dinner, as we became ever-better acquainted, we shared a little of our own lives.
Looking back after I left Dorset – as I pulled weeds from my neglected London garden and drew pictures of what I’d photographed on tour – I realised that it was precisely this companionship that made the tour special. I could have learnt as much studying gardening online, or in a book. I could have Googled the best suppliers of this and that. I could possibly have organised my own tour. But it would have lacked the personal connections provided by Goodwin and Tiffin, and the particular flavour of the stories they shared as we ate together – stories that were sometimes amusing, sometimes motivational, and sometimes both at once.
Having finished with the weeds, I stopped to count the pregnant buds on a peony. This reminded me of a story Tiffin told us about his late American artist friend. The story was fundamentally about trusting your own instincts as a gardener – but to summarise it that way sounds dull.
“John Hubbard went to a snobby plant nursery,” Tiffin told us. “He said he’d like the Bowl of Beauty peonies. They said, ‘Oh, Mr Hubbard, but those are rather vulgar.” So he said, ‘I’ll have 12.’”
John-Paul Flintoff was a guest of G&T Garden Tours (07887 848074), which is running three tours in May and June 2025, from £3,950 per person.
The walled garden is, unusually, oval shaped. Enjoy the abundant herbaceous borders, and try to time your visit to see the hundreds of varieties of roses, including the garden’s national collection of pre-1900 gallicas.Stay: The Townhouse Hotel, Melrose, has doubles from £148 (01896 822645)
Piet Oudolf created the walled garden, which comes into its own in autumn. Herbaceous perennials, organised into a series of discrete areas within 18th-century walls, are enlivened by surrounding trees and hedges.Stay: The Talbot, Malton, has doubles from £180 (01653 639096) 
Spend a week touring private and world-famous gardens: Glendurgan, the Lost Gardens of Heligan and Hestercombe, and make a trip to the Isles of Scilly to visit Tresco Abbey Garden (01423 396506).Price: £5,200
Great Dixter is a historic house, a garden, a centre of education, and a place of pilgrimage for horticulturists from across the world. Once the home of the gardening writer Christopher Lloyd, it’s now under the stewardship of Fergus Garrett. Not far away is the famous garden created by the English film director Derek Jarman, when he was dying, on the shingle shore near Dungeness nuclear power station.Stay: The Queen’s Inn has doubles from £130, (01580 754233).
At the heart of a traditional, family-run estate covering 3,500 acres of rolling Cotswold countryside stands a 200-year-old Mogul Indian palace, set in a romantic landscape of temples, grottos, waterfalls and canals reminiscent of the Taj Mahal. Batsford Arboretum is home to a collection of some of the world’s most beautiful and rare trees, shrubs and bamboos spread across 60 acres.Stay: Dormy House Hotel and Spa has doubles from £309 (01386 852711).
The English Heritage Grade I listed garden was created by the celebrated 20th-century plantswoman and gardening writer Margery Fish. It was here that she developed her own style of gardening, combining old-fashioned and contemporary plants in a relaxed and informal manner. The premier example of the English cottage garden style, East Lambrook has noted collections of snowdrops, hellebores and hardy geraniums.Stay: Holm has doubles from £199 (01460 712470).
The half-timbered Tudor manor features several different gardens within a framework of hedges, walls and topiarised trees. Each one of the spaces has its own distinctive style and ethos. The Well Garden, with tall yew pyramids, was recently redesigned.Stay: Hawkstone Hall Hotel & Spa has doubles from £295 (01630 685242).
The formal gardens on the south side of this beautiful historic house give way to a vista of parkland and lakes linked by a canal. There’s a rose garden, and whimsical topiary includes large teapots. The most striking feature is the box hedge parterre designed by David Hicks and planted out in the early 1990s. The planting consists of clipped lavender, perennials such as geraniums, salvias, iris, nepeta, and spring bulbs including hyacinths and tulips.Stay: The Jockey Club Rooms, Newmarket, has doubles from £129 (01638 663 101).
Created in 1975 in an acre of old walled kitchen garden, this spot is divided into different compartments to create diverse habitats. The vast selection of rare and unusual plants that thrive here make the garden seem much larger.Stay: Brockencote Hall has doubles from £138 (01562 777876).
Italianate Arts and Crafts garden on a steeply sloping site, with lily pond, dolphin fountain, a summerhouse, rose garden, ancient sculpted topiary, a sunken garden and woodland.Stay: Thornbury Castle has doubles from £269 (01454 281182).