The Newt Garden

About the garden

Owned by

Edward Workman

The formal gardens at The Newt in Somerset have been shaped over the last 200 years by successive enthusiasts and renowned designers, including Margaret Hobhouse, who elevated the gardens to a Victorian ideal, introducing colour, a greenhouse and many specimens of beech, oak, pine, walnut and cedar; and Penelope Hobhouse, who gave Margaret’s vision a new lease of life in the 1970s. In the mid-1980s designers Nori and Sandra Pope experimented with colour, delighting and inspiring thousands of visitors, with the estate’s latest incarnation created by Italo-French architect Patrice Taravella, believing a garden should be both beautiful and useful.

At the core of the formal gardens sits the Parabola, a historic walled garden concealing an apple tree maze – home to 460 apple trees of 267 cultivars. Apple cultivars that come from England are arranged in order of county, with Wales, Scotland and Ireland also represented.

The garden is Baroque in spirit, laid out in a series of descending terraces in this formal style, and at the edges, diverse woodland offers a sheltered habitat for native wildlife. The Produce Garden is home to more than 350 cultivars of fruit, vegetables and herbs that feed the estate’s restaurants and farm shop while the Winter Garden is inspired by Victorian plant hunters and collectors, with displays of exotic ferns, orchids, succulents and tropical fruit trees, kept at 20-25° all year round.

The ancient woodland provides logs, leaves and berries for the kitchens, as well as habitats for wildlife, and features 70ft hornbeams, veteran oaks, and a 300-year-old Druid Tree.

At The Story of Gardening museum, dig into the history of gardening and explore the human impulse to shape beauty from the ground at our feet, with garden rooms and interactive exhibits to be transported to gardens throughout time.    

Please note: this garden is partially accessible.