Join us as we celebrate 30 years of the UK’s biggest garden entry scheme. With our pick of some of the 2 for 1 Gardens that first joined in 1994. Back then, there were just over 120 gardens offering the discount, but now it has grown to include over 400 of the nation’s favourite gardens. Here’s to 30 more years of happy garden visits!
Fit for a king
The Savill Garden is set like a jewel in the heart of Windsor Great Park, filled with colour at every time of year. The various gardens flow into one another like the changing seasons.
Highlights include the modern rose garden, with its raised walkway, the winding woodland paths, and the large flowing waterfall. Late spring delights in the shady woodland garden include erythroniums, trilliums and primulas.
ENTRY OFFER Garden: 2 for 1 £16.95, single reduced to £8.48. For opening details, see windsorgreatpark.co.uk/savillgarden
Hardy perennial
Athelhampton House Gardens, near Dorchester, combine grandeur and charm. Fountains and architectural features give structure to cosy, reflective enclosed spaces. The poet and novelist Thomas Hardy had a life-long relationship with Athelhampton. His first visit was as a young apprentice stonemason, when he painted a watercolour of the gatehouse. The house was inspiration for Bathsheba’s farm in Far from the Madding Crowdand the setting for The Dame of Athelhall– a characteristically cheery poem about unrequited love.
ENTRY OFFER Garden: 2 for 1 £13.50, single reduced to £6.75. Open all year – for full details, go to athelhampton.co.uk
Rooms with a view
Dyffryn Gardens, just west of Cardiff, joined our 2 for 1 Gardens scheme back in 1994, and was described as ‘one of Wales’s greatest gardens’. This is as just as true today. Restored by the National Trust, the elegant Edwardian gardens comprise a series of individual ‘rooms’ that have a distinctly Italianate feel, including the wisteria-covered Pompeian garden, cloisters and a rose garden.
ENTRY OFFER House & garden: 2 for 1 £12. Open all year – for full details, see nationaltrust.org. uk/dyffryn-gardens. Offer not valid on bank hols.
Playing a blinder
Arley Hall and Gardens, in Cheshire, regularly steals the show on TV. It has played host to weddings and funerals in Coronation Street, features in the Netflix series Fool Me Once, and was most famously blown to smithereens in the finale of Peaky Blinders.
The gardens
