Spectacular Shropshire gardens set to open gates to visitors for fund

From Telford, to Market Drayton, Church Stretton to Shrewsbury – there will be a variety of gardens to explore this Summer.

The National Open Garden Scheme gives visitors across the country unique access to more than 500 private gardens in England, Wales, Northern Ireland and the Channel Islands.

Since its launch in the early 1900s, more than £67 million has been donated to nursing and health charities through the scheme, with £3.11 million donated in 2022.

Not only does the scheme support a variety of charities, it also supports the physical and mental health benefits that comes with spending time in the natural world.

The National Open Garden Scheme will commence this weekend on Saturday, with dates running through June and into July.

Cruckfield House in Ford is open this Saturday from 2pm to 5pm. Admission is £8 a person and children go free.

There will be home-made teas and refreshments on offer in aid of the Royal Shrewsbury Hospital League of Friends.

An artist’s romantic three-acre garden, Cruckfield was formally designed and intensively planted with a variety of unusual herbaceous plants.

It has many species of trees, shrubs and wildflower meadows and surrounds a lake with bog and moisture-loving plants.

Horatio's Garden at The Robert Jones and Agnes Hunt Orthopaedic Hospital in Gobowen, will be open to the public this Saturday from 2pm to 5pm.

The garden opened to great acclaim in September 2019 and was partly funded by the National Open Garden Scheme.

It offers a therapeutic place of peace for patients, their loved ones and NHS staff spending time in the Midland Centre for Spinal Injuries.

Featuring raised beds, specimen trees, a multi-purpose garden room, glasshouse, and a rill running the length of the garden, it is a horticultural sanctuary like no other.

Preen Manor gardens in Church Preen, near Much Wenlock, will be open on Sunday, June 18 from 2pm to 6pm.

This is a six-acre garden on the site of Cluniac priory and former Norman Shaw mansion.

It has a large variety of garden rooms, including kitchen parterre and fernery. Formal terraces with fine yew and hornbeam hedges have panoramic views over the parkland to Wenlock Edge.

More dates for the diary are:

• Grooms Cottage, Waters Upton, Telford, TF6 6NP - Saturday, June 24

• The Secret Gardens at Steventon Terrace, Steventon New Road, Ludlow, SY8 1JZ - Saturday, June 24

• The Bramleys, Condover, Shrewsbury, SY5 7BH - Sunday, June 25

• 1 Grange Court, Condover, Shrewsbury, SY5 7BU - Sunday, June 25

• Hodnet Hall Gardens, Hodnet, Market Drayton, TF9 3NN - Sunday, June 25

• Brownhill House, Ruyton XI Towns, SY4 1LR - Tuesday, June 27

• The Albrighton Trust Moat & Gardens, Blue House Lane, Albrighton, Wolverhampton, WV7 3FL - Saturday, July 1

• 1 Scotsmansfield, Burway Road, Church Stretton, SY6 6DP - Saturday, July 1

• Upper Marshes, Catherton Common, Hopton Wafers, nr Cleobury Mortimer, DY14 0JJ - Sunday, July 2

• Goldstone Hall Gardens, Goldston, Market Drayton, TF9 2NA - Wednesday, July 5

Children go free in all Shropshire gardens as part of the National Garden Scheme events.

To find out more, visit ngs.org.uk