Gardeners at Anne Boleyn’s childhood home have begun the “mammoth task” of trimming back five kilometres of hedging including an 120-year-old yew maze as children head back to school.
Nearly 125,000 people have made their way through the maze stretching three quarters of a mile in length at Hever Castle and Gardens this summer.
The estate’s gardening team of 10 got to work at the beginning of September to keep the grounds near Edenbridge, in Kent, in shape.
“Birds typically nest between March and August so we wait until we know there are no nests before beginning the mammoth task of trimming the hedges.”
According to a castle spokesperson, American billionaire William Waldorf Astor began the garden’s transformation by employing more than 1,000 men between 1904 and 1908.
This included creating a maze out of 1,000 yew trees imported from the Netherlands.
Hever Castle and Gardens also features a giant yew chess set after Mr Astor gained inspiration from one at the British Museum used during the reign of King Henry VIII.
Autumn at Hever Castle
With bulb planting workshops, a dye garden workshop and tours of 'Church Gill' - the new re-imagined woodland that’s being developed by Kevock Plants, Autumn Colour at Hever Castle & Gardens is set to dazzle.
Hever is arguably at its romantic best in the autumn when the Boston Ivy adorning the front of the Castle turns a vivid shade of red.
Visitors are treated to glorious displays of autumn colour throughout the Estate when the rich yellow, red and orange leaves of beech mingle with liquidambars, tulip trees and Japanese maples, contributing to an explosion of colour.
And new this year is ‘Church Gill’. This area has been redeveloped over the last five years, redesigned and planted.This re-imagined rock garden is a tranquil space where birds come to sing in private with the bubbling brook as their soundtrack. Woodland and shade-loving plants like epimediums and the coloured leaves of the perennials planted on the sloping banks provide for interest year round. Monet-style bridges painted in egg-shell blue criss-cross the winding brook, taking visitors on the same route that Astor and his family would have taken to church 120 years ago.
The dye garden tour and workshops, bulb planting masterclasses and Church Gill tours will run throughout October.
To book, go to hevercastle.co.uk
Hever Castle’s history stretches back more than 700 years and is probably best known as the childhood home of Anne Boleyn, Henry VIII’s ill-fated second wife. However, much of what visitors see today is the work of wealthy American William Waldorf Astor who arrived in 1903 and lavished his fortune on renovating the house, even building an entire mock-Tudor village to accommodate his guests, followed by creating the gardens in a grand style.
Out of boggy marshland, Astor’s vision saw the transformation of the landscape with major excavations for a 38-acre lake involving 800 men digging by hand and 1,000 mature yews taken from Ashdown Forest to form a maze. A Tudor rose garden was laid out and an enormous Italianate garden constructed, inspired by the ruins of Pompeii as well as to display his classical sculptural collection.
