The Old Vicarage, Burley

About The Old Vicarage, Burley

The Old Vicarage is a three acre country garden, looking out over the Vale of Catmose to the west and over parkland to Burley House to the east. By the mid-1990s the garden was mainly laid to grass and the most remarkable features were some fine old trees and a fabulous display of snowdrops in the winter.
In the last twenty five years the garden has been redesigned to introduce structure and the ground landscaped to give a series of terraces. Hedges of yew, beech and hornbeam have added definition. There is now a rose garden, home to a mixture of old roses and David Austin English roses with hardy geraniums, peonies and clematis and another of white roses planted with hardy geraniums and nepeta. A terrace linking the two rose gardens is framed by a pair of white standard wisteria and purple irises behind lavender edging. Completing this corner of the garden is a rill which runs out from a circular pond though terraced borders. Paths lead from the rill, through the white rose garden on to a lawn enclosed by mixed borders.
A Mediterranean garden with grapes, olives figs and citrus fruits sits in a sheltered corner next to the house, and beyond this is an ornamental kitchen garden with high brick walls, containing a wide variety of fruit, herbs, and cutting beds for flowers. Four pairs of vegetable beds, edged with step-over apples are managed in crop rotation. The vine-house provides shelter for grape vines, peaches and nectarines and, in season, for tomatoes, aubergines and peppers. A path leads from the walled garden, through hornbeam cloisters into an orchard of plums, gages, cherries and apricots planted among wild flowers and then on into an old apple orchard. Across another wildflower meadow, the ground falls away towards the wild pond and an area planted with acers and native wild flowers, and returns to the house though a walk of pollarded lime trees, hardy geraniums and Japanese anemones.