Yesterday I cycled to Hunworth in North Norfolk to visit Hunworth Hall Garden. It was quite hard work cycling into a cool north westerly wind but well worth the effort.

Hunworth Hall dates from the eighteenth century and was bought by the Crawley family in 1965. They created a tennis court, orchard and kitchen garden, but the area between these and the hall was a large paddock, grazed by goats. The present owners, Henry and Charlotte Crawley, moved into Hunworth Hall in 1983 and began to establish the extensive garden that can be seen today.

The garden is in the Anglo-Dutch style (as seen in the gardens at Westbury Court in Gloucestershire and Het Loo in the Netherlands), with formal hedges, canals and a folly. There are lollipop-shaped golden hollies, box balls, yews and a big beech hedge. A raised walk at the back of the garden gives views over the rest of the garden and a lovely big Eucalyptus tree overhangs a croquet lawn.

I love the formal elements but also the swathes of wildflowers (now past their best, but they must be teeming with insect life in July and early August) and the vegetables, the gnarled orchard trees, beds full of lavender and clusters of Echinops and other perennials, all of which soften the structure and bring life and humanity into this lovely garden.

The tea and Cornish sticky cake were lovely too. Hunworth Hall Garden was open under the National Gardens Scheme. (I missed the previous opening, in 2012.)

The weather improved just in time. I arrived in Hunworth just before 1 o’clock and ate my lunch at the church while I waited for the garden to open at 2 o’clock. The morning’s cloud melted away to leave blue skies and warm sunshine and I sat on a bench by the church door and watched Swallows and House Martins flying past, with a Buzzard and then a Sparrowhawk circling on the thermals over the small valley to the west. The churchyard, incidentally, is a superb example of how to manage grassland for wild flowers and wildlife, but also allowing public access. The wind dropped during the afternoon, but still gave me a helping push as I cycled home.

Hunworth Church