Date/Time
Date(s) - 01/09/2024 - 02/09/2024
All Day
Location
Leicester Bowling Club
Following the success of last year’s visit to RHS Bridgewater with an overnight stay, we have asked Winsons to organise another overnighter, this time to Suffolk. There will be visits to two very special gardens on the Sunday and we are organising a visit to Helmingham Hall on the way home. The cost of this visit is extra, payable to LRGT.
Overnight trip to Suffolk organised by Paul Winsons Coach Travel
Sunday 1st to Monday 2nd Sept 2024
Staying at the 4* Salthouse Harbour Hotel, Ipswich
Price: £202pp in a twin or double – £30.00 single supplement
Package includes coach travel, half board, ensuite rooms, breakfast, admissions into Fullers Mill and Wyken Garden on the Sunday.
To book: Download Winsons booking details
Itinerary
Sunday 1st September 2024
Pickup point: 8.30am – Leicester Bowling Club, Kenwood Road (LE2 3PL)
Overnight parking available at Bowling Club (Suggested donation £3.00)
A comfort stop will be made en route.
Fullers Mill, West Stow – 11.00am until 1.00pm
Fullers Mill is an enchanting 7acre garden on the banks of the River Lark at West Stow, six miles north-west of Bury St. Edmunds.
It combines a beautiful site of light, dappled woodland with a plantsman’s paradise of rare and unusual shrubs, perennials and margins, planted with great natural charm. Euphorbias and lilies are a particular feature but there is interest in every season.
Bernard Tickner and his wife moved to Fuller’s Mill in 1958 and, over the next fifty years, they created the garden from rough scrub and woodland. They worked particularly with plant form and texture in addition to colour, to build a garden of truly year-round interest.
The garden consists of the Top Garden, The River and Mill Pond, The Quandaries, The Low Garden and The Strip. Fullers Mill cottage has its own private garden which is still owned by the family but is not open to the public.
In 2004, the garden was donated to the Fuller’s Mill Trust, a registered charity, which was established to manage the garden and ensure its future.
More information on Fullers Mill here.
Wyken Hall Gardens, Bury St Edmunds – 2.00pm – 4.15pm
Once occupied by Romans and recorded in the Domesday Book, the ancient estate of Wyken is quintessential Suffolk: country lanes, hedgerows, patchwork fields and woodlands. Wyken is a 1200-acre farm, which includes a flock of Shetland sheep, a small herd of Red Poll cattle and a 7-acre vineyard, producing award-winning wines, including the English Wine of the Year.
The romantic gardens surrounding the Hall cover 4 acres and have been designed in the last 30 years as a series of `rooms´ wrapped around a cosy Elizabethan house and then leading into more natural areas. The creative partnership of the owners, Sir Kenneth Carlisle – an RHS Committee member and his American wife, Carla, who writes a regular weekly column for Country Life, has created an outstandingly exuberant garden, full of invention and surprise.
The garden ‘rooms’ include a knot garden and a herb garden, designed by Arabella Lennox-Boyd, as well as a traditional English kitchen garden, wildflower meadows, a nuttery and a copper beech maze. Unusual touches include a parterre with rocking-chairs and superb maize gate. A woodland walk leads to the vineyard where regular wine tastings are held. Also, near the vineyard is the Wyken Shop – The Leaping Hare Country Store, which was described by Country Living magazine as “a model of what a shop should be”.
The whole place is remarkable for its colours and scents, particularly in high summer. Fields and orchards with wandering hens, peacocks, guinea fowl and llamas enhance the relaxed atmosphere, while the outbuildings, painted in American pioneering colours, are the personal touch of Lady Carlisle.
More information on Wyken here
Arrive at the Hotel around 5.15pm – Evening meal: 7.30pm
Monday 2nd September 2024:
Breakfast: from 7.30am.
Check out and board the coach by 11.00am
Visit to Helmingham Hall, Stowmarket: 11.30am until 3.00pm
(This visit is organised by LRGT not Winsons)
The Tollemache family have lived at Helmingham since 1487. The house is a double-moated manor, half-timbered when built in 1480, but given a cladding of bricks and tiles in the eighteenth century. It is set in a 400-acre deer park, dotted with vast oak trees. The Helmingham Gardens website describes it as follows:
“It is hard to exaggerate the effect this beautiful park, with its red deer, spectacular moated Hall in mellow patterned red brick with its famous gardens will have on the visitor. The whole combines to give an extraordinary impression of beauty and tranquillity.”
The formal garden lies beyond the moat, to the south of the house. A classic parterre flanked by hybrid musk roses lies before a stunning walled kitchen garden with exquisite herbaceous borders and beds of vegetables interspersed by tunnels of sweet peas, runner beans and gourds. On the other side lies a herb and knot garden, behind which is a rose garden of unsurpassable beauty.
The influence of the well-known garden designer Xa Tollemache, is clearly visible – the parterre was redesigned in 1987 and the rose garden to east of the coach house was created in 1982, together with the knot and herb garden.
Outside is a lushly planted south-facing spring border which includes many irises and peonies. There are also wildflower areas, fruit trees and a shady yew walk. Lady Tollemache is a gifted plantswoman and designer, and her own (Grade I listed) garden increasingly benefits from her skill.
More information on Helmingham here
We have arranged a guided tour of the gardens with the Head Gardener, but it has not been possible to book coffee on arrival or lunch. There is a café, though, where you will be able to purchase these during your visit. Apart from the guided tour this will be a free flow visit.
Cost: Group rate, including garden tour £16.00
For further information contact Elizabeth. (Telephone 01162705711)
Elizabeth and the Events Team
The cost of this visit is extra to the Winson’s package and is payable direct to LRGT. Sorry about this inconvenience.
To pay for Helmingham online:
Copy and paste this form into an email, complete and send to Fliss at flisshector@gmail.com
Helmingham Hall, Monday 2nd September 2024
Name…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
Address……………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
Telephone……………………………………. Email……………………………………………………………….
I/We have booked for the Suffolk trip with Winsons and am/are paying for
…. @ £16.00 Total £…………. (Paid by bank transfer)
I do/do not require email confirmation of my booking
Pay by bank transfer to Leicestershire and Rutland Gardens Trust 30-18-69 00033098 Reference: HEL followed by your surname
Booking and Payment by post :
Download, print and complete the booking form and pay by bank transfer or cheque.