Garden Tour: Barnsley House

Visiting Barnsley House in the U.K. is very much like taking a step back in time. Tucked in the Cotswolds and built out of the warm colored stone of the same name, Barnsley House was constructed in 1697. Today it’s most famous in horticultural circles for the gardens David Verey, an architectural historian, and his wife, Rosemary Verey, an internationally known garden designer, created.

The ‘Laburnum Walk’, pictured above, has become an iconic symbol of English garden design and has been pictured and imitated in countless books, magazines, and gardens. The walk is a tunnel of Laburnum trees trained around metal arches. Their soft, yellow, pendulous racemes pleasantly modify the quality of the light penetrating the leaf canopy and the lavender Allium umbels standing at attention on each side of the walk are a soothing compliment. Famous as it is, the walk is sadly only in bloom for about a fortnight every year during the month of May. Of late, the walk has undergone a rejuvenation: everything has been taken out and replanted with new trees to begin again. It will be some time before the walk takes on the look you see above.

A knot garden

Since Rosemary Verey’s death in 2001, the property has changed hands several times until finally becoming an upscale hotel and restaurant. There are 3 ways to visit the garden: Purchase a membership, make reservations at the restaurant, or stay as a guest in the hotel. We opted to try the restaurant and were not at all disappointed! The menu is creative and the dishes well-executed. The kitchen takes advantage of the well-tended vegetable garden near the house incorporating seasonal produce into the menu.

The kitchen garden bordered with miniature box hedges

Part of Barnsley’s charm is its scale: intimate spaces and narrow paths give one a sense of quiet peace, none of it is intimidating, all of it is inviting. It feels much like a garden a gardener can aspire to having at home and so many design aspects can be equally well applied to contemporary gardens. I’ll leave you with a series of images, all of them inviting you to experience Barnsley House first hand. 

Standing outside the famous Laburnum tunnel before it was replanted

Rhubarb and the rhubarb forcing jars so popular in English gardens but all but impossible to find in the U.S.

Scottish Highland Cattle living south of their natural range!

The famous Handkerchief tree, Davidia involucrata