Get an exclusive look at England’s best gardens
Going beyond the hedges of these grand estates is usually not possible but a new tour gives access to these spectacular grounds.
We are touring the gardens at Farrs, a handsome 17th-century stone townhouse in Beaminster, Dorset, when owner Jenny Makepeace spots her geese. From the filthy look she gives them, it seem the troublesome trio may have been making free with Jenny’s vegetables.
“The time has come to rehome them,” she declares with decisive finality. “Any takers?” For most of us, from continental Europe and the US as well as Australia and New Zealand, the offer feels decidedly like a stretch. But both of our tour hosts, who live locally, show every sign of being interested.
That’s the thing about Jason Goodwin and Simon Tiffin, the hands-on duo behind G&T Garden Tours; there’s precious little that doesn’t interest them. You can’t help but sense these dynamic, inquisitive and engaging individuals might just be the type to take on unwanted poultry — and so much besides.
When Goodwin, a writer and columnist, and Tiffin, a former magazine editor, first teamed up in 2021, their goal was to create garden tours that were exceptional not only for their levels of service but their breadth of vision.
Rather than the standard offer — a seat on a bus and the usual round of strictly timed visits to public gardens, plus discount voucher for the garden cafe — they set out to introduce guests not only to the best gardens of southwest England but to everything else they treasure about their delightfully secluded region.
Across a week with the pair, my travelling companions and I discover the distinctive landscapes of the Jurassic Coast, named for the profusion of world-class dinosaur fossils unearthed around the port town of Lyme Regis. We hear about the local lore and history from Goodwin, an acclaimed historian, and while meeting a number of memorable people, pick up some local gossip too. Throw in excellent food at outstanding restaurants such as Brassica in Beaminster and dinners by local chefs Caroline and Claire at our private lodgings at Symondsbury Manor, impromptu stops for the region’s best ice-cream and end-of-day visits to the beach at Eype, and we feel more like friends than guests.
Witness our visit to Farrs, and not just for the fun with the geese. It helps, of course, that Goodwin and Tiffin know owners Jenny and John Makepeace well; in a region thick with gardeners, writers, designers, florists, organic food producers, cake makers and other creative types, these two seem to have a handle on pretty much everybody. Our visit is above all informal and entertaining. As we are a small group — just eight guests, with G&T groups capped at 12 — it seems less like a tour of a garden than a joyous encounter with one.
In a rich exchange of ideas and observations, we run through subjects ranging from propagation to slug control via garden design, rainfall patterns, problems with pondweed and English seasons.
Even the history of the town’s dairy factory, with its striking brick chimney that is perfectly framed in the Mobius-shaped steel sculpture that rises from the Makepeaces’ lawn, makes the cut. Furthest from the house is Jenny’s patch, with its wonderfully blowsy borders, cleft-oak fruit cage and cabin, with walls made of straw bales. Jenny uses the shack as her pottery studio (cue exchange about glazes). In stark contrast is husband John’s adjacent garden, with its scrupulously maintained beds of grasses and high coppiced trees, its sculptures, and a formal pond complete with Japanese-style bridge that leads to a must-have summerhouse in stone and glass.
John is also an award-winning furniture maker whose pieces adorn London’s V&A and other international museums.
After we’re done with the gardens, and taken coffee and biscuits on the lawn, we listen as John reflects on his work. He talks of the inspiration he takes from organic forms and of the unusual English timbers — holly, rosewood, mulberry, ripple sycamore, even 5000-year-old preserved bog oak — that he especially favours for his award-winning chairs, tables and chests.
For lunch we head to the Seaside Boarding House, an acclaimed eatery overlooking the beach at nearby Burton Bradstock. Over a plate of dressed Portland crab, served with a lemon mayonnaise, Tiffin talks of what drew him to the area 15 years ago.
“England might be a small place, but West Dorset’s hard to reach,” he says. “It’s one of those rare English counties without a motorway. That helps. It means people tend to put down roots here rather than visit from London for the weekend. They are invested in the place. The region has excellent soils and a mild maritime climate, so plants love it here, which is why renowned gardeners like Penelope Hobhouse and Anna Pavord, and more recently garden designers Isabel and Julian Bannerman, have made their homes nearby.”
May and June sees England’s gardens at their best; by late June, when my visit takes place, we are into the longest days of summer. Even the famously unreliable weather puts on a show, and abundant lupins, dahlias, salvias, roses and delphiniums are in full bloom. “We were here in May last year,” says repeat guest Sue, a New Zealander. “Though that was just a month earlier, the gardens looked completely different, with the tulips, peonies, irises and wisteria at their peak.”
In the afternoon we visit an altogether grander affair, the stately home at Mapperton, where we are treated to a personal tour by owner Caroline Hayman, Countess of Sandwich.
“We’re not great ones for riotous colours,” says Caroline , stopping to point out a favourite climbing hydrangea. “Shades of green are more our thing.” It’s a point amply illustrated by Mapperton’s standout set piece, the wooded dell at the back of the house where topiary gardens of sculpted yew, and a magnificent orangery, were created after World War I. On a beautiful day in a beautiful corner of England, we progress past formal ponds, where Hayman admits to occasionally swimming among the newts, to lose ourselves in the wonderful arboretum.
The day continues with Tiffin, himself an accomplished gardener, taking us back to his house for tea and cake, a splendid sponge created by the pick of the region’s bakers. It transpires that we are also here to meet his dog, Hector, and to hear, even more improbably, the original piece that he commissioned Royal College of Music prodigy Nahum Strickland — yet another talented local — to compose in honour of the beloved cockerpoo. The Hequiem, explains Strickland , a professed devotee of English pastoral composers such as Vaughan Williams and Delius, celebrates Hector’s impressive ability to charge around. One might add that it perfectly encapsulates the idiosyncrasy and sheer joie-de-vivre that exemplify G&T tours.
Back at Symondsbury Manor, set in its own enchanting swathe of gardens near Bridport, guests put their feet up, head to the beach or take a drink before dinner. And so the week unfurls in its inimitably agreeable way. We meet florists and gardeners.
We encounter a host of other gardens, each stamped with the style, character and horticultural interests of its owner.There is the idyllic manor house of Jasper Conran at Bettiscombe where the noted fashion designer invites us to join him for a cup of tea — after some of us have sneaked a peep at the grass snake, a harmless and beautifully patterned creature, which has taken up residence in the compost heap. There is the farm at Wytherston that Johnnie Boden, founder of the eponymous online clothing company, has made his home.
He gives us an enthusiastic welcome before describing his mission to return swathes of over-fertilised agricultural land to wildflower meadow. Boden is honest enough to concede the experiment has proved challenging, and expensive, but to see hay fields ablaze with yellow rattle, scabious, vetch, orchids and knapweed feels like a return to an earlier and more innocent age.
The thought stays with me. By the week’s end I’m persuaded that, apart from the gardens, it is Dorset’s time-warp quality, with its high-sided lanes, honey-stone villages, lovingly preserved rural landscapes and traditional ways, that so appeals.
Many of my fellow guests profess a determination to return — for the outstanding gardens, of course, to say nothing of the food, company and fun, but to a place where they still trade geese.
In the know
G&T Tours will run three tours in May and June, 2025. The six-night tours, including all accommodation, meals, garden visits, talks, transport and gratuities, start from £3950 ($7680). Guests can be collected from Dorchester Station and are based at Symondsbury Manor, Bridport.
Jeremy Seal was a guest of G&T Tours.
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