“The Gardens and Arboretum …feature landscaped woodland walks and footpaths, with vistas across the lakes to the Millennium Walk and the 18th Century Walled Garden, recently remodelled to provide a stunning combination of contemporary and traditional landscaping and planting. The Visitor Centre offers a Tea room, Gift Shop and Plant Centre.”

We’ve been going for walks here for several years – particularly in the autumn, when there are striking reds and whites to be seen. Click here for a blog we did with a video and some pictures, admiring the autumn colours, and click here for our Feb 2011 blog to see the snowdrops!

ESSEX DAYS OUT TIP : Pop into Coggeshall to admire the village and get something to eat/drink.

“The Beth Chatto Gardens began in 1960. From an overgrown wasteland with poor gravel soil and boggy hollows it has been transformed into an informal garden harmonising with the surrounding countryside”

A wonderful garden, featured regularly on TV, especially for the dry garden, although there is a damp garden as well!

Click here for a blog about a visit we made in 2010.

360-acre estate to explore, with lots of events. We visited there at the end of April 2011 and loved it – click here for the blog.

A jewel in the English Heritage crown, with the main house, the recently opened Service Wing, lots of open space, formal gardens, Victorian walled garden and greenhouse, and stable wing. You can spend all day there! The walled garden and the greenhouse are fascinating, and if it’s the gardens you are after, skip the house and visit the nearby Gardens of Easton Lodge (see below).

Click here for a blog about a visit we made in 2010. ESSEX DAYS OUT TIP : The main cafe can get very busy at peak times, so plan your lunch with that in mind!

The 23-acre gardens were rescued from neglect when a restoration programme started in the 1990s. The gardens are only open on about half a dozen days in 2011 – 17th April, 22nd May, 19th June, 17th July, 21st August, 18th Sept, 16th October.

We visited on their open day in April – click here to read our blog. Highly recommended!

“Green Island Gardens are private gardens, open for the public to visit in Ardleigh near Colchester, Essex. Professionally designed by its owner Fiona Edmond, Green Island Gardens are laid out as a series of structured gardens displaying a huge range of unusual trees, shrubs, perennials, and bulbs – ‘a plantsmans paradise’.Surely one of the best gardens open to visit in Essex.”

“A peaceful garden with ponds, a bog garden, a rose border, trees and shrubs.”

12-acre garden surrounding an Elizabethan Hall, current owner, garden writer Hugh Johnson and his wife

The garden, designed by Sir Frederick Gibberd, is recognised as an important contribution to 20th century garden design and is listed on the English Heritage Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in England.

Georgian house surrounded by 100-acres of parkland, a 1-acre walled garden, and other formal gardens recently renovated.

“Bridge End Garden is a series of seven interlinked gardens laid out by the Gibson family in the nineteenth century. These Grade II listed gardens are open to the public each day free of charge. Careful restoration has replicated gardening techniques and designs typical of the Victorian era and has brought the garden back to its full splendour.”

Open every day apart from Christmas Day, although some parts of the garden are occassionally closed.