The Centre for garden lovers

Pensthorpe is home to two very special Gardens designed by Chelsea Gold Medal Winners Piet Oudolf and Julie Toll which together create a year round spectacle of interest and colour.

The Millennium Garden at its peak is a cascade of beautiful and unusual perennials together with stately elegant grasses.  This now firmly established one acre garden is the result of Piet Oudolf's now legendary naturalistic prairie planting design style.  This combination brings swathes of colour from the perennials with striking grasses.  The Garden builds to its peak in mid August then slowly dies back in the autumn to golds, bronzes and silvers.  Piet Oudolf is widely recognized as one of the most influential garden designers of the last 20 years.

Julie Toll's Wave Garden has year round structure, with meandering yew hedging and a Luzula stream weaving through.  This lakeside garden sits delightfully under the resident trees oak, pine and silver birch and varying soil conditions, from a stunning boggy area to a glorious sunny bank.  During late winter thousands of spring bulbs start to emerge bringing a welcome start to the year with tulips, snowdrops and daffodils.  Highlights of geraniums and delicate hellebores bring light to carpets of woodruff and ferns.

The abundance of plants doesn't just stop at the two formalised gardens.   A stroll in Spring through the bluebell wood or in early Summer to see the wildflower meadows in full bloom with orchids, cowslips and wild primroses is a fantastic experience.