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WOODLAND WALKS, GARDENS, GREENHOUSES AND VINEYARD ARE ESSENTIAL TO THE LEEDS CASTLE EXPERIENCE
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Since the Middle Ages the park has been an important feature of Leeds Castle reflecting its status as a royal residence. And today the park, with its delightful and informal gardens, traditional greenhouses and vineyard, is essential to the Leeds Castle experience.
Visitors walking into the castle grounds first come to the famous Duckery – created in the 1960s for Olive, Lady Baillie, by the international garden designer Russell Page. The Duckery and the castle moat are home to numerous wildfowl and constant work is ongoing to improve their habitat.
The paths then wind through the Wood Garden, which is presided over by the striking statue of a female figure. This garden is spectacular in spring with its mass plantings of narcissi and anemones amid ash, willow and alder, which make way for summer flowering shrubs and plants along with rhododendron and azalea.
For many, the exuberant Culpeper Garden is the quintessential English garden with neat box hedges enclosing a mass of traditional colourful perennials and fragrant annuals such as roses, pinks, lupins and poppies.
Originally the castle’s cut flower garden, the Culpeper Garden was transformed into a “cottage garden” in 1980 by Russell Page. The herbs planted along the old wall would please Nicholas Culpeper, the famous 17th century herbalist and a distant relation of the Leeds branch of the family.
The Culpeper Garden currently features the national collection of Monarda – bergamot – registered with the National Council for the Preservation of Plants and Gardens.
The dramatic Mediterranean – style Lady Baillie Garden, opened in 1999 by HRH Princess Alexandra, and was designed by landscape architect Christopher Carter.
The striking terraces with soaring plants more usually found in warmer climates, including palms, olives, pomegranate, mimosa, vines, hedychium and echiums, offer panoramic views across the castle’s Great Water. The garden was carefully designed to ensure it was easily accessible to all visitors and offered a tranquil resting place.
Garden enthusiasts are also welcome to visit the castle’s 13 traditional greenhouses which still supply plants and flowers for the castle rooms as well as growing stock specially for day visitors.
Back in the 1730s Lord Fairfax sent wild olive and ginseng from Virginia to be grown in the castle hothouses.
Today the castle greenhouse keepers are renowned for their fine pelargonium; fuchsia and fan-trained, hand pollinated peaches and nectarines.
Vines were grown in the Len Valley in the 11th century and the Leeds Castle vineyard replanted in 1980 is probably on the same south-facing site as one of two Kent vineyards mentioned in Domesday Book.
There is further documented evidence of a vineyard at the castle in a Register of Royal Expenses, dated 1291-1293, for Edward I and Queen Eleanor of Castile. Leeds Castle archives show that wine production ceased in the 15th century when the site became known as Vineyard fields.
Five centuries later in 1980, Leeds Castle Foundation replanted the three acre site with Muller Thurgau vines from Germany and Seyval Blanc vines from France. The then-Minister for Agriculture formally planted the first vine.
The vineyard’s year starts with major pruning in January and February, followed by the final selective pruning in April. May to August is spent protecting the vines against fungal attack and mildew in preparation for the harvest in late October or early November when the Castle gardeners join together to pick all the grapes of each variety in a single day.
Top English winemaker Stephen Skelton, of Tenterden, now produces more than 8,000 bottles of wine each year from the castle vineyard and these award-winning Leeds Castle wines are sold exclusively in the castle restaurant and shops.
In 2000 additional Riechensteiner and Schonberger vines were planted to widen the range of wines for the future.
Leeds Castle is open to the public from 10am-5pm (last admission) daily from March until the end of October, and 10am-3pm during the winter months.
The castle is four miles east of Maidstone and clearly signposted from Junction 8 of the M20.
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