Binsted Place

About Binsted Place

The gardens of Binsted Place consist of a series of rooms surrounding the house and its local stone historic outbuildings. The gardens are surrounded by clipped formal yew hedges and old stone and brick walls and cover approximately 1½ cultivated acres. It is at its best in June with its many roses and herbaceous borders. There is a productive vegetable garden and orchards whose fertility is assisted by our friendly beekeeper whose hive lives on our boundary. I have lived and gardened here since 1984, and my husband is a very keen vegetable and fruit grower and often threatens to move into his polytunnel full time! Our areas of responsibility are clearly defined; we have a wall between the two parts of our garden! I inherited a garden which already had a wonderful intricate structure of hedges and walls but have changed the emphasis a lot over the years to incorporate my love of roses and herbaceous plants and the use of box hedging to formalise some of the growing areas. We are lucky that our soil, partly upper greensand, will allow ericaceous plants to grow, with a little encouragement, although we are rather more free-draining than I would like in these recent dry summers. We are also extremely lucky in our very dedicated part-time gardener, Dom Brooking, without whom none of this would be possible.