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It was wonderful to visit Levens Hall again after 5 years. It is still as beautiful as I remember and we had a calm day in mid September 2021.
Colonel James Grahme acquired Levens Hall in 1688 and brought with him the French garden designer Monsieur Guillaume Beaumont who had been gardener to the King and by 1694 Levens Hall garden was laid out in the popular formal style of the times with clipped evergreens and hedges that you see today. Over the years, as styles changed, some of these beautiful gardens were ripped apart and replaced with more natural landscapes but the original gardens at Levens survived for us to enjoy today, three centuries on.
Levens Hall is the Worlds oldest topiary garden with over 100 pieces many of them 300 years old. It has a dedicated team of 4 gardeners to look after them throughout the year. Lightweight scaffold towers and a hydraulic lift are used to reach the highest points, using mainly battery powered clippers to trim the sculptures and the work is carried out once a year in September.
As we enter the Topiary garden there is the Rose Garden planted with David Austin’s “English” roses and under the Topiary are flowerbeds planted out with annuals in a more natural “tapestry” design.
The gardens also have an Orchard with Bee hives and old apple trees that still produce 4 tons of fruit a year for Levens Kitchen. In addition to apples are Medlars, quinces, pears and damsons.
Moving on is the Bowling Green that is over 300 years old, we then walked down the Pastel Borders with wooden pyramids clothed in small flowering Clematis and planted out with seasonal pastel coloured flowers.
At the end of the Pastel Borders is the entrance through The Great Beech Hedge, an original feature from 1690, best seen in spring when carpeted in wild garlic. The huge hedge is clipped every year and takes two people at least two months to complete using scaffolding to reach up the high sides. The East borders at the other side of the beech hedge are planted out with mainly deep reds and purples, with late season large leaved Cannas and Castor Oil plants.
The Fountain Garden is lined by pleached limed screens with shaded arbour tunnels. You can sit and watch the fountain as it splashes into the pond covered with a mass of white waterlilies.
From there we walked back to the exit passing the flower beds, roses and getting different views of the topiary statues from the other pathways.
On this visit I didn’t walk to the Ha-ha, Foli or visit the vegetable garden, There is also a children’s playground, Gift shop and Cafe.
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Music: “A Night Alone” by Track Tribe from KZbin Audio Library
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