Hotel Endsleigh

About the garden

Owned by

Olga Polizzi

Designed By
Humphry Repton

Created as a hunting and fishing lodge for the sixth Duke of Bedford at the beginning of the 19th century, Endsleigh House was designed by Jeffrey Wyatt in the Cottage Orné style. The surrounding garden, which was one of Humphry Repton’s last completed commissions, is a Grade I listed, picturesque garden overlooking the River Tamar, on the Devon-Cornwall border.

The 108-acre garden consists of formal gardens around the house, including a 330ft long herbaceous border filled with flowers from April through to the first frosts, a rose walk that is at its peak in late June, a parterre bedded out in June and October, a gravity fed fountain, a shell house and lawns sweeping down towards the Tamar.

In the wooded dell beyond the house is a magical garden where groves of acers fill the valley with autumn colour, a sea of gunneras cover the valley floor in summer and streams and waterfalls rush down the sides of the valley over rocky outcrops and cascade through ponds and pools to the Tamar.

The ruins of a brewery, boiler house and two display glasshouses line the path into the dell, below which are a large rockery with views of the Duchess’ picturesque dairy in the valley below, a grotto and a pool. The surrounding woodland was planted as an arboretum and contains 18 champion trees and many rare specimens.

Endsleigh has often been described as one of the country’s most romantic gardens. The house is now run as a hotel and is open to non-residents for lunch, dinner and afternoon tea.