Shandy Hall Gardens

About Shandy Hall Gardens

Shandy Hall was given that name after Laurence Sterne wrote ‘The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman’ here in the 18th century. It merits the name also because it was originally a medieval long hall, dating from c. 1450.

The garden around it must be very long-established. Laurence Sterne was himself a gardener, and even grew nectarines. The present garden was created by Julia Monkman, who came here with her husband Kenneth and in the 1970s established the Laurence Sterne Trust and the ‘lived-in museum’ with its collection relating to the life and work of Sterne. The garden is now managed entirely by volunteers.

There are four main parts to the garden. The front garden has changed little in its basic form from the very earliest illustrations of the house. Box-edged beds enclose roses after tulips and forget-me-nots in the spring. Two variegated holly trees flank the front door, and New Dawn rose grows over the front walls. Behind the cottage and gallery is a square garden with a central sundial, with roses and cottage garden perennials.

Through a small apple orchard is a further walled garden, and by the lightning-struck sweet chestnut tree is an entrance leading to a further acre of woodland in a former stone quarry. This part of the garden is known as the Wild Garden, (though all parts of the garden are managed for wildlife) and mown paths wind through meadow areas with some larger specimen plants. There are many bulbs and hellebores in the spring. It is a good place for a picnic, or for quietly sitting and listening to the birdsong.

Though Shandy Hall gardens are open to the public from May to September, we have chosen to open later in the evenings for the National Garden Scheme. Evening can be a particularly lovely time in the garden. Moth trapping, identification and release will take place on NGS nights. Over 450 different species have been captured in the gardens – you are welcome to come and learn more about these beautiful and rarely seen creatures at 7.15pm, when moths caught the previous night will be identified and released and the trap set for the following night.

Moth trapping demonstration.