Hundred House Hotel to open garden to raise money for charity

The Hundred House Hotel is opening up its garden to visitors to raise money for nursing and health charities as part of the National Garden Scheme.

The garden, stretching over an acre of land behind the popular pub, has been lovingly created and maintained over 35 years by the Phillips family.

Second-generation David Phillips, 63, explained: "We moved here in 1986 and there was just a plain grass lawn.

"My mother, Sylvia, a keen gardener, wasn't having that. She set about planting lots of trees, dug a big fish pond, set up a culinary herb garden and planted roses.

"There's even a little chapel made out of salvaged bits and pieces from old chapels, my mother had a large imagination - we've even got our own stone henge.

"My mother died in 2009, and my father, at 84 - probably the oldest landlord in the county - now maintains the garden, with some help, in her memory."

The garden includes over 5,000 bulb flowers including tulips, hyacinths, daffodils, alliums, blossoming trees and dancing pond flowers.

As well as a flourishing herb garden that stocks the hotel's kitchens, fruit trees in the garden provide apples for freshly crushed apple juice.

There's even a donkey, named Pegasus, whose manure helps the garden's dozens of David Austin roses along.

Still an entire family affair, David helps run the accounts, while brother Stuart and his wife Jo run the hotel.

David's daughter, Dora, 18, has just become the third generation chipping in by working in the restaurant.

The garden will be open for charity on April 3, May 1, July 3 and September 4. Pre-booking is essential and can be done online at: ngs.org.uk/gardens/hundred-house-hotel-tf11