Gardens to visit in spring and summer – Ham House

Built in 1610, Ham House is one of the most outstanding Stuart houses from a period which has seen few survivals through to the present day. The reason Ham House stayed relatively intact when other houses were looted and burned is thanks to the Duchess of Lauderdale, who was renowned both for her extravagant expenditure and as a political schemer. During the seventeenth century, the house was at the heart of Civil War politics and Restoration court intrigue but somehow was spared all the turmoil of Cavalier and Roundhead battles.

The beautiful landscape that surrounds the house includes the much-photographed Cherry Garden, which contains lavender parterres flanked by two vaulted trellises of pleached hornbeam and a statue of Bacchus at its centre, as seen in our picture. In the formal garden you will also find eight grass lawns divided by low hedges, gravel walks and flowerbeds, and the South Terrace border has been replanted in a formal seventeenth century style. Cones of yew alternate with clipped flowering shrubs, including such exotics as hibiscus and pomegranates and rows of herbaceous plantings complete the effect.

Beyond this is the Wilderness, a formal maze-like planting of hornbeam hedges, which hide four circular summerhouses. The Orangery, one of the oldest free standing examples in England, now serves as the café and on its front aspect you will find one of the oldest ‘Christ’s thorn’ bushes in the country – supposedly planted from the staff carried by Joseph of Arimathea as he conveyed the body of Christ to its final, lost, resting place. Watch out for exotic visitors in this area, as walnut and chestnut trees in the outer courtyard act as roosts and nesting sites for a large flock of escaped green parakeets.

Ham House photograph by addictive picasso, used under a creative commons attribution licence

 

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