Burloes Hall

About Burloes Hall

I love the peace and calm of our garden: the setting is stunning with incredible far reaching views over the Chiltern hills.

The garden is formal; yew hedges planted in the late 19th Century give shape and order to the garden, creating areas of privacy and calm. It is built on chalk and only has a thin layer of soil. There are majestic beech trees, and the lawns extend into a field which has become part of the garden, with mown paths and a wild area of grasses and flowers such as Queen Anne’s Lace. There is an orchard area with plum, damson, apple and quince trees.

There are many areas that I love in the garden including two centrally planted box hedges containing two old Irish yews which act as sentinels to the garden. Surrounding that are eight beds of nepeta and white iceberg roses. There is a wonderful contrast of white hydrangeas, Michaelmas daises and vivid pink dahlias in the long borders flanking the main lawn. There are mixed herbaceous borders in the ‘secret garden’ with a variety of scented roses.

My husband and I created a sunken garden which we call the ‘Spanish Garden’ in 1997.
It consists of four areas of box hedges with four central topiaries of Holm oak surrounded by lavender which is at its most lovely in September . There are two iron pergolas on either side of this sunken garden covered with white Kiftsgate rambling roses and swigs of laburnum in the spring.

The garden is full of birds and recently we had a pair of kestrels who bought up their young in a hollow of one of our beech trees. The garden is regularly visited by deer and many other animals.

Recently, in response to climate change, we have planted more cistus which is quite drought resistant and lavender which seems really happy in the heat. We have also reduced our lawn and created a ‘wild grasses’ area which reduces mowing .

I hope visitors will bring their dogs and enjoy walking and picnicking in the garden or the garden field.

It is important to us to open our garden to the public to allow people to enjoy what we take for granted. So the NGS will we hope bring a lot of people into the garden to discover it for the first time and raise a lot of money for charities. We have weddings here at Burloes Hall for exactly the same reason. Katharine Newman September 2023
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