Herbal Travels: The Fenton House Garden in England

Reader Contribution by Lemon Verbena Lady
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You can check out the Lemon Verbena Lady at her blog http://lemonverbenalady.blogspot.com

Because Mother Nature dumped eight more inches of snow on my herb garden, I am going to wander back over to England and share with you one of last the gardens that I visited last September. It is Fenton House  in Hampstead, England, which is just north of London.

Fenton House has been untouched for more than 300 years.
Photo by Nancy Heraud

While the house was beautiful and the collections were very interesting, I was most interested in the gardens. Fenton House is a 17th-century merchant’s house that has been unaltered during more than 300 years of continuous occupation. The large garden is also vitually unchanged since it was described in 1756 as “pleasant well-planted with fruit trees and a kitchen garden, all inclos’d with a substantial brick wall.”

Here is the cross border, which are surrounded by an 8-foot yew hedge.

Cross borders are surrounded by a yew hedge.
Photo by Nancy Heraud

In the pamphlet I recieved about the history of the garden, it says the various flowering shrubs and hardy perennials are at their best in late summer and autumn. I would whole hardily agree. It was just breathtaking. This cross borders area was a very intimate space. Some of the herbs included were Salvia officinalis ‘Purpurascens’, and Artemisia ‘Powis Castle’. The perennials included Perovskia atriplicifolia ‘Blue Spire’ (a shorter version of the original), Fuchsia magillanica ‘Gracilis’, Anemone ‘Honorine Jobert’, Anemone splendens, Aster x frikartii ‘Monch’, interplanted with white cosmos, Persicaria affinis ‘Superba’, Phlox paniculata ‘Fujiyama’, Viola cornuta ‘Alba Group’, Lillium speciosum ‘Album’, Agapanthus ‘Lilliput’, Stipa gigantea, Eryngium variifolium, Sedum spectabile, and Ballota pseudodictamus.

The other wonderful part of this garden is that it has an herb border, an orchard and a kitchen garden.

This herb border is alligned with olive trees that are planted in pots.
Photo by Nancy Heraud

The herb border was laid out at the end of 1999. Permanent plants include myrtle, hyssop, chives, rosemary, thyme and lavender to name a few. Various annual herbs are planted each year and are not the same from year to year. Three olive trees are planted in pots.

To see more photos of this wonderful garden, click over to my blog, Lemon Verbena Lady’s Herb Garden. I will be posting many more photos of all parts of the gardens. It was a wonderful space and so lovingly tended. They were getting ready for an apple festival so the orchard was heavily ladened with apples. It was a delicious sight. Hopefully, Mother Nature will cooperate and I will bring you a second posting about the Herb Garden Planner next time we meet.

  • Published on Feb 25, 2011
Tagged with: Reader Contributions
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