NGS County Organiser Maggie Bateson (second from left) presenting a commemorative sundial to Peter & Margaret Aldington (centre & second from right), with former gardener Dawn Meadows (left) and current gardener Jackie Hunt (right) Photo: Paul Wilkinson Photography Ltd.
Monday 6 May 2019 2.00-5.00pm
Tickets on the gate - Adults £4.50, children free (cash only please)
2019 marks 40 years of Turn End garden opening for the National Garden Scheme, raising funds for nursing and caring charities. We will be delighted if you are able to join us to explore the garden (house closed) and enjoy home-made teas and cakes, in support of Christian Aid.
The studio of Heather Hunter, our Artist in Residence, will also be open to explore. Heather specialises in printing and Artists’ books and she takes much inspiration from the garden for her work. We also have small selection of home-grown plants for sale.
Turn End is only one of 8 gardens in Buckinghamshire that have opened for 40 years or more for the National Garden Scheme. We have been presented with a commemorative sundial which we will be proudly erecting in the garden.
We have raised nearly £39,000 for the National Garden Scheme (NGS) in our 40 years of opening the garden.
The NGS was originally set up to support district nurses, but is now the largest single funder of nursing and caring charities in the UK. The NGS also supports charities doing amazing work in gardens and health, grants bursaries to help community gardening projects and supports gardeners at the start of their career by contributing to training and apprenticeship schemes.
In 2019, the NGS donated £3 million from funds raised from gardens opening for the scheme across the UK during the 2018 season.
After a warm spring, Turn End’s garden is bursting with life and colour. Come and enjoy the late spring bulbs, newly emerging ferns, irises, peonies, flowering shrubs and tree blossom. Explore the dry garden, a small woodland-like area, formal box garden with tulips, sunken gardens and mixed borders around a curving lawn, all framed by ancient walls and mature trees. There are courtyards with pools, pergolas, secluded seating and a Victorian Coach House.
The garden is listed at Grade II and is renowned for its interlinked informal spaces and garden rooms with naturalised planting around existing trees, all interwoven with the house. This reflects the hands-on approach, spatial skills and deep understanding of materials and plants by Turn End’s creator & resident, architect Peter Aldington. Created in conjunction with the house, the garden is an expression of the architect's belief that architecture and landscape design are an indivisible whole. This intimate linkage is rare in a later 20th Century scheme and Turn End is the only post-war listed project where the house and garden were created by the same hand. The houses and garden are also noted as exemplary as a model of later 20th Century intervention in a historic environment.
PARKING - We are located in the historic centre of Haddenham, on a narrow residential road. There is free, but very limited on-street parking on Townside and surrounding roads.
If you are able, please park elsewhere in the village and enjoy walking through Haddenham to visit us. Please park on wider roads and keep clear of driveways - thank you!
Haddenham village hall has offered use of their car park to our visitors between 1.30-5.30pm on Monday 6 May (30 parking spaces - 5 minutes’ walk, signposted on the day):
Haddenham Village Hall
Banks Park (off Banks Road)
Haddenham
Bucks
HP17 8EE
Please download a village map here to find your way to us! Please see our Contact & Visiting Information page of our website for public transport information.
We look forward to welcoming you to Turn End Garden.
The main glade in late spring