The Historic Houses Garden of the Year Award 2025 has kicked off, with eight beautiful gardens competing to be named the Garden of the Year in a public vote. The award, launched in 1984 and sponsored by Christie’s auction house, has gone from strength to strength since then, with tens of thousands of votes cast in recent years.
Shortlisted entries are chosen from among the hundreds of gardens, parks, and grounds that offer free entry to members of Historic Houses, the association that represents and supports the UK’s independent historic homes, castles, and gardens. Details of this year’s eight finalist gardens can be found below. Voting is open now on the Historic Houses website.
Ben Cowell, Director General at Historic Houses, said: “This year’s shortlist shows the variety on show across England’s finest gardens. They range from the historic grandeur of Arundel Castle to the bluebells and wildflower meadows of Hole Park. Hestercombe blends Georgian formality with Edwardian charm, while Iford Manor offers Italianate terraces and tranquil vistas. At Lowther Castle, a planting scheme has taken over the ruins, while at Penshurst Place visitors can enjoy 11 acres of Elizabethan gardens. The walled gardens at Raby Castle have recently had a complete makeover, while Wollerton Old Hall delights with intimate garden rooms and exquisite planting. Each of our shortlist offers a unique journey through history, beauty, and seasonal splendour.”
Ursula Cholmeley, Chair of the Historic Houses Gardens Committee, said: “There is such a wonderfully diverse range of gardens in the UK under independent ownership, and this annual award is a great opportunity to recognise and reward the hard work that goes into the upkeep of these gardens, from both the owners and full gardening teams. This year’s shortlist showcases the natural beauty up and down the country, with eight impressive gardens.”
Orlando Rock, Chairman at Christie’s UK, said: “As proud supporters of this wonderful initiative since its inception in 1984, we always look forward to this time of year with great anticipation. The announcement of the nominations aligns perfectly with the arrival of spring, a season that reflects renewal and beauty. Each garden in this year’s nominations offers a unique vision, brimming with creativity and elegance. We invite everyone to explore these breathtaking gardens and cast their votes for their favourite. Best of luck to all the nominees, and may the gardens continue to inspire us all. “
About the eight competing gardens
Arundel Castle Gardens, West Sussex
Set high on a hill, Arundel Castle commands the local Sussex landscape with magnificent views across the South Downs and the River Arun.
The extensive 38 acres of gardens and landscape provide visitors with beautiful floral displays throughout the spring, summer, and autumn months, with wonderful specimen trees within the landscape and an immense variety of plants throughout the gardens.
https://www.historichouses.org/house/arundel-castle/visit/
Hestercombe Gardens, Somerset
Hestercombe Gardens, located near Taunton, spans 50 acres of quintessential Somerset beauty and showcases four centuries of garden design. Visitors can explore the Georgian Landscape Garden from the 1750s, the Victorian Shrubbery, and the Edwardian Formal Gardens, crafted in the early 1900s by Sir Edwin Lutyens with planting schemes by Gertrude Jekyll, offering a rich and varied horticultural experience.
Through meticulous research and conservation efforts, Hestercombe Gardens Trust have brought back the gardens to their original splendour, blending historical accuracy with enduring beauty.
https://www.historichouses.org/house/hestercombe-house-and-gardens/visit/
Hole Park, Kent
Hole Park is an extensive, private family garden of rich variety set in classic English parkland. Created after World War I in the style of an Edwardian gentleman’s garden, it has evolved into a wonderful blend of the formal and informal thanks to the dedicated vision and care of four generations of the Barham family. Standout features include extensive Yew topiary, herbaceous borders; sweeping lawns with fine specimen trees, ponds and pools, and a magnificent walled garden.
The gardens are centred around a beautiful Georgian house with spectacular views of the surrounding parkland and hills of the High Weald National Landscape.
https://www.historichouses.org/house/hole-park/visit/
Iford Manor Gardens, Wiltshire
Tucked away at the bottom of a tranquil valley, the garden at Iford is historic and has evolved over many generations of passionate private gardeners, most famously landscape architect Harold Peto who made Iford his home 1899-1933. He took a Georgian terraced garden and developed it further, building on Mediterranean as well as Japanese influences, with statues, colonnades, rills and ponds gracing the terraces.
By 2025, Iford will have been on a 60-year restoration journey, over two generations. Thought lost after the war, the structural recovery was undertaken by John and Elizabeth Cartwright-Hignett. William & Marianne Cartwright-Hignett encountered a new generation of challenges when they took over in 2016. They have recovered and restored many areas, extending and enhancing in the process.
https://www.historichouses.org/house/iford-manor-gardens/visit/
Lowther Castle, Cumbria
When Lowther Castle & Gardens Trust recruited a garden designer to take on the sleeping beauty that the gardens then were, their brief was clear: the gardens should not be restored as such; instead, the gardens should see layers of the new and layers of the old side by side.
The resulting gardens at Lowther Castle are amazing. They take the formality of the seventeenth century, the pseudo romance of the neo-Gothic, the extravagance of the Victorian and Edwardian eras, and blow them all up – in consequence presenting ideas that are novel and striking and bold.
https://www.historichouses.org/house/lowther-castle/visit/
Penshurst Place Gardens, Kent
The formal gardens at Penshurst Place have records dating to 1346, though their formal structure didn’t begin to take form until the 1560’s, when Henry Sidney divided the area into “rooms” to grow fruit trees.
Today the thriving formal Gardens are divided into eleven distinct rooms which cover a variety of styles including herbaceous borders, renaissance-inspired box hedging, water features, statues and patterns. Visitor highlights include the 100-metre long Peony Border which features four varieties of pink peony, the Union Flag Garden which uses a selection of roses and lavender to create the Union Flag, and the bright vivid colours found along Jubilee Walk.
https://www.historichouses.org/house/penshurst-place/visit/
Raby Castle, Park, and Gardens, County Durham
When 12th Lord Barnard inherited Raby in 2016, he and Lady Barnard commissioned award-winning designer Luciano Giubbilei to join them on a journey of reimagination. The result opened in June 2024; a transformation & ingenious re-thinking of its distinctive spirit. Historic features from red-brick walls to mature yew hedges blend perfectly with new additions, a grass amphitheatre, mazes & graceful rill.
Described by the 4th Duchess in 1870 as “A never-failing delight”, the walled gardens have enchanted visitors for centuries. Evolving to embrace innovation, nurture an ever-increasing variety of plants, and respond to global changes, the most recent transformation sees the garden grow into the 21st century with a graceful, contemporary reimagining.
https://www.historichouses.org/house/raby-castle/visit/
Wollerton Old Hall Garden, Shropshire
Designed by Lesley and John Jenkins, the garden is set around a Grade II* sixteenth century Hall and has developed into an important modern garden in the English Garden tradition with echoes of Arts and Crafts. Covering three acres, it consists of a series of 14 linked garden “rooms” filled with modern and often specialist plantings.
The carefully managed successional planting ensures that each season has its appeal to visitors. The early months of the year are awash with drifts of anemones, erythroniums, snowdrops, trilliums and hellebores and dotted with bursts of colour from scilla, corydalis, muscari and tulips. The summer months are filled with the scent of roses, delphiniums, dahlias and phlox.
https://www.historichouses.org/house/wollerton-old-hall-garden/visit/
About the Garden of the Year Award
For over forty years the public have voted one of Historic House’s member gardens their favourite of the year. The award, run in conjunction with Christie’s, has gone from strength to strength since then.
Shortlisted entries are chosen from among the hundreds of gardens, parks, and grounds that offer free entry to members of Historic Houses, the association that represents and supports the UK’s independent historic homes, castles, and gardens.
In addition, the panel will make a second, direct, award to a garden they consider embodies excellence on a smaller scale, either of area, staffing, or access, and hence has less opportunity to influence the popular poll – known as the Judges’ Choice Award.
Each winner holds the crown for the whole of the following year – the sought-after title can considerably boost visitor numbers, really putting the garden on the map.
Further information about the Garden of the Year Award can be found here.
About Historic Houses
Historic Houses is a not-for-profit cooperative association representing around one-and-a-half thousand of the UK’s independently owned historic houses, castles and gardens. Hundreds of them open their doors to visitors for days out, special tours, school visits, film locations, weddings and events, or as memorable places to stay.
Members range from iconic stately homes such as Blenheim Palace, Highclere Castle, Castle Howard, Woburn Abbey, Longleat, and Burghley, to more intimate houses such as Traquair in Scotland, Treowen in Wales and Belle Isle in Northern Ireland. Most are still private family homes.
The association was established in 1973 to help owners conserve these wonderful places in the interests of the nation and carries out public affairs, advisory and marketing work on behalf of member properties. The member-access scheme sees over seventy thousand card-carrying Historic Houses visitor members enter hundreds of these houses for free.
About Christie’s
Founded in 1766, Christie’s is a world-leading art and luxury business with a physical presence in 46 countries throughout the Americas, Europe, Middle East, and Asia Pacific, and flagship international sales hubs in New York, London, Hong Kong, Paris and Geneva. Renowned and trusted for our expert live and online-only auctions, as well as bespoke Private Sales, Christie’s unparalleled network of specialists offers our clients a full portfolio of global services, including art appraisal, art financing, international real estate and education. Christie’s auctions span more than 80 art and luxury categories, at price points ranging from $500 to over $100 million. Christie’s has sold 7 of the 10 most important single-owner collections in history, achieved the world record price for an artwork at auction, launched the first fully on-chain auction platform dedicated to exceptional NFT art and manages an investment fund to support innovative startups in the art market. Christie’s is also committed to advancing responsible culture throughout its business and communities worldwide. To learn more, browse, bid, discover, and join us for the best of art and luxury at christies.com or by downloading Christie’s apps.
* Please note when quoting estimates above that other fees will apply in addition to the hammer price – see Section D of the Conditions of Sale at the back of the sale catalogue. *Estimates do not include buyer’s premium. Sales totals are hammer price plus buyer’s premium.
