Travel Stories: English Gardens Tour (1)

I’ve just returned from the most delightful trip to England. For it, I led a group to see some of the most iconic English gardens and boy, did we have a lovely time. In the coming days, I will be writing posts about the English Gardens Tour so be sure to keep an eye on this blog.

Remember that you can always click on the photos on my blog posts to view much larger images.

There were a total of 28 of us on the trip (see photo). The majority of them are from the Spokane area; two live in Great Falls, MT, one lives in Louisiana, and another joined us from Germany. And yes, my wonderful husband, Bill, joined in on the fun!

Today’s post will give you some background on the English Gardens Tour and then I’ll start writing about the gardens we visited and sights we saw over the coming weeks.

We flew to London on May 16 and returned on May 27. The tour was organized by Val Day, of International House of Travel. We visited a total of 13 gardens; seven of them were gardens I’d visited in the past. Two of the gardens were suggested by Cosetta Zanobetti, our wonderful escort who handled the day-to-day logistics of the tour — and boy am I glad she suggested those because they were fabulous! Two other gardens (Waddesdon and Gravetye) were suggested by Val’s cohorts at Europe Express.

What I think we all enjoyed the most was the fact that each garden had its own character. Some were huge, some relatively small. Some were very formal while others delighted us with their abundance of color and variety.

As you read my posts about this trip, I’m hoping the places we visited will intrigue you enough to want to put some of the gardens on your wish list for a future trip to England. You’ll notice that the highlight of our tour was visiting the Chelsea Flower Show. That was a first for me and has been one of my bucket-list items for years! It was fantastic.

One last thing before I get to the itinerary: if you’re wondering about our cute name tags, the daughter of one of our travelers graciously designed them for us. Thanks again, Candace!

Our itinerary:

May 16: Travel day
May 17: Waterperry Gardens
May 18: Waddesdon Manor
May 19: Bourton-on-the-Water (Cotswold village), Hidcote
May 20: Wisley Gardens, Chartwell
May 21: Great Dixter, Rye (village), Gravetye Manor Gardens
May 22: Sissinghurst Castle Garden, Nymans Gardens
May 23: Penshurst Place, London coach tour
May 24: Chelsea Flower Show (woohoo!!)
May 25: Chelsea Physic Garden
May 26: Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew
May 27: Travel day

Hotels:

Old Swan & Minster Mill Hotel in Minster Lovell
Buxted Park Hotel in Uckfield
Radisson Blu Edwardian, Vanderbilt in London

Coach:

We had our own coach for the majority of the trip, which was supplied by Westbus.