Nymans Gardens. The elegant garden set in Victorian era with a Tudor touch

Tudor Manor House at Nymans Gardens (Photograph by Pamm Goodey)

Nymans Gardens in West Sussex, concentrated around an old semi-ruined manor house, looks like a perfect set for a period drama, with a romantic twist, probably. The imagination easily draws a languorous Tudor lady, strolling in rustling puff dresses along Nyman’s Rose garden, accompanied by her gallant suitors, attired in hoses and elaborately embroidered jackets. The labyrinth of different gardens, separated by walls and hedges, as if was intentionally created for intimate talks and secret kisses. Although the amount of exotic plants and shrubs, scattered around Nymans gardens, would have given away the real age of the place.

Ornamental garden at Nymans Gardens (Photograph by Pam Goodey)

The fashion for foreign cultivars reached its peak on the turn of the XIX and XX centuries, when, with the rapid development of technical progress, travelling abroad became more acceptable than ever before. Brit’s interest in voyaging touched all spheres of life, and gardening wasn’t the exception. A lot of foreign specimen settled at that time in English gardens, with particular preferences to Far and Middle Eastern plants. And this is just then Ludwig Messel, a wealthy German emigrant, started his profuse vegetative collection, by laying out Nymans Gardens.

The Tudor manor house was also not built at medieval times, as well as picturesque mock-dovecote, embedded into the garden wall. In fact, it was commissioned in 1920s, by Messel’s son Leonard, who also exceeded his father’s passion in gardening and enriched Nymans gardens to a larger extent, by introducing a lot of new hybrids, some of which he created himself.

Dovecote at Nymans Gardens (Photograph by Chris Gunns)

The 30 acres of Nymans Gardens are about pretty much the one tenth of neighbouring Sheffield Park, so it won’t take long to discover all site’s nooks and cranes. And if you are after the more prolonged walk, there are 275-acres of adjoining woodland, with lake and beautiful views across the South Downs. The part of Nymans House, which sustained after the fire of 1947, is also opened to the public (for a fee, of course)

Permission is hereby granted to reproduce this article in its entirety as long as active link back to this web-address is included.