Westonbirt School Gardens

About Westonbirt School Gardens

THE GARDENS AT WESTONBIRT

The Holford Gardens and Parkland at Westonbirt include ornate buildings in an impressive landscape. The estate was laid out by three generations of the Holford family – from the early 1800s to 1926 – but created primarily by Robert Stayner Holford between 1839 and 1892. Much of the original exceptional character remains, with much of the stonework in the Victorian Gardens newly restored/conserved, including the lake, the grotto, several stone garden seats and the finials on the North wall of the Italian gardens.

The high quality architectural features of the Gardens at Westonbirt range from elaborate pavilions and richly decorated archways in the Italian Gardens to terrace walks with balustrade and ornamental fountains. Many of these were designed under the guidance of Lewis Vulliamy (1791- 1871) and predate the building of the house.

Sir Roy Strong describes the Grade 1 Listed Italian Gardens as ‘one of the most amazing and exotic built garden structures to survive from the High Victorian era’. Cotswold Life have said it to be ‘the finest ensemble of Victorian architecture, landscape and gardens in the Cotswolds’.
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