The New Naturalism Tour 2024 promises to be a trip of a lifetime. With a wide variety of celebrated public, private and teaching gardens, including Great Dixter, Sissinghurst, Knepp Castle Walled Garden, and the private home gardens of celebrated designers including Tom Stuart-Smith, Dan Pearson and James Hitchmough. Read on for the full itinerary. 

Throughout the tour Michael will call on some of the best perennial practitioners of the UK to help deliver the Travelling Masterclass, including Dan Pearson, Charlie Harpur and James Hitchmough.

Please note, the final itinerary is subject to change.

DAY 1 | Saturday 31st August

The tour will start with pre-dinner drinks and a three course meal in the private dining hall of the Richmond Hill Hotel.

The relaxed gathering will allow participants to become acquainted, and Michael to set the scene for the tour to come.

Meals included: Dinner at Richmond Hill Hotel

Accommodation: Richmond Hill Hotel

DAY 2 | Sunday 1st September

Today is dedicated to the home of the RHS, the fabulously instructional Wisley. Where else can you see and compare a traditional perennial border, double Piet Oudolf borders and a huge planting by Tom Stuart Smith on one location?

The visit to Wisley will be followed by an afternoon drink around the corner at the Anchor, an enchanting canal-side English pub. The evening is free for you to enjoy the charms of Richmond. 

Gardens: Wisley

Accommodation: Richmond Hill Hotel

DAY 3 | Monday 2nd September

This morning we’ll be visiting the home of internationally renowned designer and three-time ‘Best in Show’ winner at Chelsea, Tom Stuart-Smith. ‘The Barn’ provides an intimate insight into Tom’s own evolution and experimentation, from his signature combination of clipped plants amongst very soft perennial plantings, through to recent work with direct-sown prairie.

This afternoon we’ll experience arguably the worlds most famous Botanic Gardens - Kew, where Australian Richard Barley, in his role of Head of Horticulture, has overseen some fabulous changes. The most notable, perhaps, is the addition of two enormously long herbaceous borders that give a nod to both traditional perennial planting, and to current thinking, incorporating many ornamental grasses.

Gardens: Tom Stuart Smith’s Home, ‘The Barn’ & Kew Botanic Gardens

Accommodation: Richmond Hill Hotel

DAY 4 | Tuesday 3rd September

After checking out of Richmond Harbour Hotel we’ll be heading to the garden and gallery of Hauser & Wirth, Durslade Farm. Featured in ‘Five Seasons - The Gardens of Piet Oudolf’, Hauser and Wirth reveals one of Oudolf’s more recent plantings in the UK, covering a huge field of the old farm, and morphing from areas of quite blocky planting into others of a diffuse and gauzy fuzz.

Following lunch at Hauser & Wirth’s Roth Bar & Grill, we’ll head to Stourhead, where one could argue that a celebration of naturalism started. Stourhead was amongst the very earliest of the 18th Century English Landscape gardens, which saw the sweeping away of many grand old formal parterres in favour of an idealised vision of nature. Unfolding faultlessly around a valley in which sits an impossibly beautiful lake, we are the beneficiaries of a vision that was always going to take centuries of tree growth to realise.

Gardens: Hauser & Wirth, & Stourhead

Meals: Lunch at Roth Bar & Grill, Hauser & Wirth

Accommodation: Bath

DAY 5 | Wednesday 4th September

After working for a decade in Australia, James Hitchmough went to Sheffield University where he birthed the influential ‘Sheffield School’ of planting, using perennial en masse, frequently sown in situ. Recently retired, he’s establishing a new home garden in which he’s incorporating all the most sophisticated ideas developed over years of world-leading teaching. We’ve been invited to check on it’s progress!

Gardens: James Hitchmough’s home garden

Accommodation: Bath

DAY 6 | Thursday 5th September

This morning we’re heading to Dan Pearson’s own garden Hillside for a wander with Dan himself, who will talk us through how his own garden fuels and inspires his design work. What a treat!

This afternoon we’ll visit Iford Manor, the creation of, and was the home garden of, the great British architect-turned-garden designer Harold Peto, who was a master of the Arts and Crafts style. Like all of Peto’s gardens, an abundance of exquisitely designed stone structures provide the most perfect background for loose, apparently spontaneous planting.

Gardens: Dan Pearson’s home garden & Iford Manor

Meals included: Lunch in Bath (location tbc)

Accommodation: Bath

DAY 7 | Friday 6th September

After checking out of our hotel in Bath we’ll journey to Trentham Estate. In its fully reimagined glory, Trentham contains gardens and plantings designed by several influential designers in the naturalistic style.

The Italian garden is an example of the work of Tom Stuart-Smith, perhaps at his most formal, while the Woodland garden was designed by Nigel Dunnett, perhaps at his least constrained.  Then to complete the trio, there’s beautiful planting by Piet Oudolf as well.

Gardens: Trentham Estate

Meals included: Dinner in Sheffield (location tbc)

Accommodation: Sheffield

DAY 8 | Saturday 7th September

Sheffield has long been in an economic slump, but in recent years great efforts have been made to beautify the inner city appropriating the skills of the ‘Sheffield School’ of planting, with inputs from such luminaries as Nigel Dunnett and Zac Tudor. Roadsides are being narrowed, and in some cases closed off, to allow for great corridors of highly seasonal perennial planting. We’ll follow this inspirational vein of planting, on foot. 

Meals: Sheffield - Grey to Green

Accommodation: Sheffield

DAY 9 | Sunday 8th September

Chatsworth, the seat of the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire has for centuries been a landscape spectacle, being the place where Joseph Paxton (who eventually designed the Crystal Palace) cut his teeth. But most pertinent to our theme is the fabulous replanting of the rockery, recently completed by Tom Stuart-Smith. It’s a very different setting in which to see such perennials, but they more than rise to the challenge and look perfectly at home - as if this was always the intention.

From Chatsworth we’ll head to Tunbridge Wells where we’ll be staying for the remainder of the tour.

Garden: Chatsworth

Meals included: Dinner in Tunbridge Wells (location tbc)

Accommodation: Tunbridge Wells

DAY 10 | Monday 9th September

Today we’ll experience the astonishing walled garden at Knepp Castle - very recent planting by James Hitchmough and Tom Stuart Smith around the castle at the centre of the world-leading rewinding project, beautifully documented in owner Isabella Tree’s book Wilding. 

Our visit will be guided by head gardener Charlie Harpur.

Garden: Knepp Castle

Meals included: Lunch (location tbc)

Accommodation: Tunbridge Wells

DAY 11 | Tuesday 10th September

Today's journey will lead us through the visionary creations of Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson, as we embark on a delightful exploration of their gardening legacy. We start out where it all began for Vita and Harold - Long Barn, their first home and garden together.

In the afternoon our path takes us to the iconic Sissinghurst Castle, Vita and Harold’s pièce de résistance. It’s really Delos that we’re here to see - that part of the garden recently reimagined by Dan Pearson, in naturalistic Mediterranean style - but the whole garden is wildly enchanting and not to be missed. 

Gardens: Long Barn & Sissinghurst

Accommodation: Tunbridge Wells

DAY 12 | Wednesday 11th September

Great Dixter, where Christopher Lloyd, Great Dixter’s longest-term and most influential custodian/creator, never stopped experimenting or pushing boundaries of accepted wisdom or good taste. 

During a very special meal in the 400-year-old Yeoman’s Hall we will hear how Christo’s legacy lives on, and why Dixter plays such a critical role in the horticultural world.

Gardens: Great Dixter

Meals: Lunch in the Yeoman’s Hall at Great Dixter, and a farewell dinner in Tunbridge Wells (location tbc)

Accommodation: Tunbridge Wells

DAY 13 | Thursday 12th September

Heading home, or onwards! Check out of the hotel at your convenience.