Garden Tours and Holidays with Airedale
Gardens are the reason we plan a good many of our tours. Some are built around one great set piece, such as the guided visit to Highgrove or the tulips at Keukenhof. Others gather five or six gardens in a single county, so you see how the same climate and soil produce very different results within twenty miles.
Everything is escorted, with private coach travel, a hotel you stay in for several nights, and entrance fees to the listed gardens included. You walk in, look properly, and leave the driving and the timings to us.
Frequently Asked Questions About Our Gardens Tours
Yes, entrance to the gardens listed on each itinerary is included in the tour price. Where a property belongs to the National Trust, several of our itineraries note that entrance is included if you are a member, so it is worth bringing your card. Inclusions vary slightly between tours, so check the individual tour page and ask us if anything is unclear before you book.
It depends entirely on what you want to see. Spring brings bulbs and blossom, which is why the Keukenhof and tulip festival tours run then, and why Cornish gardens are at their best for camellias and magnolias early in the year. High summer suits herbaceous borders and walled gardens. Autumn is the season for trees, arboreta and the changing colour at Highgrove. Each of our tours is scheduled for when its gardens look their best.
More than a general sightseeing tour, and mostly on unmade ground. Gardens mean gravel paths, grass, slopes and steps, and some of the Cornish and Devon valley gardens are genuinely steep. You can usually shorten a visit and sit somewhere pleasant, and the coach is never far away. If you have concerns about a particular garden, ask us and we will tell you honestly what the terrain is like.
Not always. Most of our British garden tours set aside a number of single rooms at no supplement, and the tour page states how many. Once those are taken, a supplement applies, and the amount is shown on the individual tour. Solo travellers are common on these holidays, so you will not be the only one. Ask us which singles are still available on the departure you want.
Yes. Clubs, societies and groups of friends regularly take a departure as a private group, which lets you choose the date, the joining points and the balance of the itinerary. We can also build something new around gardens your members particularly want to see. Get in touch with approximate numbers and preferred dates and we will put together a proposal and a per-person price.
Highgrove is visited by guided tour only, in groups, with a set date and time, and allocations are limited and released well in advance. Our tour includes the guided garden tour and a two-course lunch in the Orchard Room afterwards. Because places are finite, these departures tend to sell early. Photography and access are governed by Highgrove's own rules rather than ours, so ask us for the current conditions.
Gardens across Britain, county by county
Our British garden tours are grouped by region because that is how gardens make sense. In Cornwall, the sheltered valleys running down to the Fal and the Helford let tree ferns, camellias and rhododendrons grow to a size unthinkable further east; our tour there takes in the Lost Gardens of Heligan, Trebah, Trewidden, Pencarrow and the Eden Project.
North Devon is different again, with RHS Rosemoor, the eighteenth-century landscape at Castle Hill and Marwood Hill's collections in a sheltered combe. In Yorkshire we base ourselves in Harrogate for RHS Harlow Carr, Beningbrough and the Himalayan Garden and Sculpture Park. Cambridgeshire brings the university's Botanic Garden together with Anglesey Abbey and the Wimpole Estate. Wales pairs the great glasshouse of the National Botanic Garden with Aberglasney's restored cloister garden, and adds a run on the Gwili Railway.
Highgrove, the Cotswolds and great estates
Highgrove is the one people ask about most, and it needs booking well ahead. Our autumn tour includes a guided walk through the garden, with the beech hedges and the wildflower meadow going over into gold and russet, followed by a two-course lunch in the Orchard Room.
The Cotswolds sit within easy reach of the same hotels, and that matters. Hidcote, laid out by Lawrence Johnston as a series of outdoor rooms, changed English garden design for a century afterwards; Kiftsgate Court is a few minutes' walk away and holds its own comfortably. Sudeley Castle, Bourton House and Batsford Arboretum appear on our Cotswolds itineraries too. Between gardens there are villages such as Bibury, which need no explanation once you are standing in them.
Flower festivals and gardens abroad
Some gardens are worth timing a whole holiday around. Keukenhof plants millions of bulbs each autumn for a season that lasts roughly eight weeks in spring, and we visit it both by coach and by river cruise, the latter combining Antwerp, Rotterdam and Amsterdam with gardening talks on board.
Elsewhere we follow the calendar. Girona's Temps de Flors fills the medieval streets and courtyards with flower installations, and we add the Marimurtra and Cap Roig botanical gardens on the Costa Brava. Brussels lays its Flower Carpet across the Grand Place every second August, with Meise Botanical Garden nearby. Istanbul's tulip festival is a reminder that the flower reached Holland from Turkey, not the other way round. Madeira, frost-free and volcanic, grows almost anything.
Private garden tours for clubs and societies
A great many of these holidays are taken by gardening clubs, horticultural societies, U3A groups and church parties who book the whole tour to themselves. We have run tours for arts societies to Highgrove and the Cotswolds on exactly that basis.
A private departure gives you some useful freedom:
- Pick-up points close to home rather than a fixed regional departure list
- Departure dates chosen around a flowering season or a show
- Itineraries adjusted to your members' particular interests, whether that is walled kitchen gardens, plant collections or landscape design
- Time for a private guided visit or a talk from a head gardener where the garden allows it
Tell us roughly how many of you there are and what you would like to see, and we will work up an itinerary and a price.
