Whether you’re seeking some inspiration for your own garden, want to revel in glorious vistas, investigate unusual planting or see landscapes adorned with sculpture, sculpted topiary or cosmology … we’ve put together a guide to seven sensational gardens that will entertain and amuse you.

At Alaster Anderson we love to see what other garden designers have created, from the 17th century to the present day, and these gardens include creations by royalty, a film director, artists and authors.

Which will you like best?

Derek Jarman Garden, Kent

The late film director had little to work with when he chose a bleak stretch of shingle facing Dungeness nuclear power station for a remarkable garden … but that was the point. Facing his own mortality after being diagnosed with Aids, he created something enduring in the most inhospitable of surroundings

“Other worldly shingle desert”

— The Guardian

As The Guardian has evocatively written: “As you crunch your way across the otherworldly shingle desert on the tip of the Kent coast, you encounter a series of enigmatic stone circles bursting with red and yellow poppies. Driftwood totems rise above shaggy tufts of sea kale, while talismanic strings of pebbles dangle from rusting iron posts, above the metal balls of fishing floats emerging from clumps of gorse. The boxy hulk of a nuclear power station looms in the background, emitting a distant hum. It is one of the strangest, most magical garden scenes in the world.”

2. Levens Hall, Cumbria

The home of topiary and a garden absolutely bursting with joy. This surreal and unique collection of ancient box and yew trees, in abstract or geometric shape, dates back to the 1690s and is the world’s oldest topiary garden. It is truly spectacular! There are also beautiful displays of underplanting, with an ever-changing array of more than 30,000 bedding plants that are all grown in the on-site greenhouses, as well as wall borders, vegetable, herb, fountain and rose gardens, fine lawns, wildflower meadows and a willow labyrinth.

3. Garden of Cosmic Speculation, Dumfries

This unforgettable 30-acre sculpture garden features bridges, landforms, sculpture, terraces, fences and architectural works. It uses nature to celebrate nature, both intellectually and through the senses – including the sense of humour. There is a stepped water cascade to tell the story of the universe; a terrace distorting space and time like black hole; a “Quark Walk” in homage to the smallest building blocks of matter and a collection of lakes and landforms recalling fractal geometry. But beware, before setting off do note that the garden is only open to the public one day a year, normally the Sunday of the first May bank holiday, through the Scotland’s Gardens charity scheme.

4. Sissinghurst, Kent

Home to the gorgeous White Garden created by writer and garden designer Vita Sackville-West, where she restricted the colour palette to white, green, grey and silver. It has been described as a “refuge dedicated to beauty” where a panoply of textures, shapes and form are deployed to draw attention and spark surprise.

Sissinghurst Castle was home to Sackville-West and her husband Sir Harold George Nicolson KCVO CMG, who as well as being a politician, diplomat, historian, biographer, diarist, novelist, lecturer, journalist and broadcaster, also found time to be a gardener!

From lilies to delphiniums, hydrangea to gypsophila, this is a masterpiece. (Read more about Sissinghurst in our white garden blog series)

5. Sculpture by the Lakes, Dorset

At Alaster Anderson we have built a reputation for using sculptural form, shaping hedging and planting to create gardens that are living works of art. So we have a natural affinity with this 26-acre oasis for art lovers, established by sculptor Simon Gudgeon and his wife Monique. There are more than 30 of Simon’s large sculptures and work by 30 other international sculptors in a sculpture park that has been landscaped and carefully curated to ensure each piece is perfectly positioned in its surroundings. Monique has planted botanic gardens to add to the sensory pleasure. You may also like The Hannah Peschar Sculpture Garden in Surrey.

6. Blenheim Palace, Oxfordshire

No list would be complete without a Capability Brown garden, and Blenheim Palace is a World Heritage Site with over 300 years of history. Brown, who popularised the English landscape style by replacing formal gardens with naturalistic parkland of trees, expanses of water and rolling grass, created a spectacular, tree-fringed 40-acre lake as the setting for one of England’s grandest houses. He planted thick belts of trees around the park boundary and designed new drives for the mansion that is still home to the Dukes of Marlborough. As well as his sweeping landscapes, there are majestic Water Terraces, an Italian Garden, the peaceful Secret Garden, the Churchill Memorial Garden and the exquisite Rose Garden.

Alaster was so inspired by Capability Brown landscapes as an early child that they ignited a passion for garden design. As a boy, weekends were spent playing and roaming around large country estates, many conceived by Capability Brown, whilst his mother tool part in horse trials.

7. Longstock Park Water Garden

Six spectacular acres encompassing beautiful crystal waters, 16 miniature islands and more than 40 different waterlilies alone, it is no surprise the Longstock Park Water Garden has been called “the finest water garden in the world” (by the International Waterlily & Water Gardening Society.) Huge but intimate, vibrant but tranquil, the garden attracts visitors from all over the world and hosts an array of wild plants. Now owned and managed by Waitrose as part of its Leckford Estate, it was originally created by the Beddington family in the early 1900s.