Garden Tours and Holidays with Airedale
Gardens are at the heart of many of our tours. Some are built around a single, outstanding experience, such as a guided visit to Highgrove or the spectacular tulip displays at Keukenhof. Others bring together five or six gardens across a county or region, revealing how different designers, planting styles and landscapes create distinctive results, even within a few miles of one another.
Every tour is escorted, with private coach travel, a hotel stay of several nights and entrance to the gardens listed in the itinerary included. We take care of the driving, arrangements and timings, leaving you free to explore each garden at your own pace, discover the details and enjoy the experience without feeling rushed.
Frequently Asked Questions About Our Gardens Tours
Yes. Entrance to the gardens listed in each itinerary is included in the tour price. For properties belonging to the National Trust, some tours include admission for National Trust members, so it’s important that we know how many members are in your group when arranging your visits. Inclusions can vary between tours, so please check the individual tour page and get in touch if you have any questions before booking.
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.
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.
Our garden tours are designed with groups of like-minded people in mind, bringing together some of the finest gardens, landscapes and horticultural experiences in the UK and beyond. Whether you’re a gardening club, a horticultural society or a group of friends who share a passion for gardens, we can help you discover exceptional places, from celebrated gardens to more secluded gems. For private groups, we can also explore tailoring an itinerary around the gardens your members most want to visit. Get in touch to discuss your group’s interests, preferred dates and approximate numbers, and we’ll be happy to put together a proposal with a price per person.
Highgrove is visited only on guided tours, 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 out early. Photography and access are governed by Highgrove's own rules rather than ours, so we recommend you investigate these if you are considering adding a visit to your itinerary.
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.
