There is a blue Rock-Garden, a Wild Garden, stretches of 
lawn and woodland. It is like a great stage set for a great event 
— and the great event to you is your visit. 
The present owner is Major, the Honorable J. J. Astor and 
he is generous about allowing visitors. If you will write to him 
his secretary will send you a permit to visit Hever Castle on 
given days at given seasons. The steward and gardeners will 
treat you as old friends. 
Hever is about twenty-live miles from London in Sussex n,ear 
the Kent border. The motor ride is a pleasant one or there are 
trains. There is an exceedingly picturesque Inn where we did 
not lunch, but probably the boiled potatoes are no worse than 
they are at any other English Inn, and the mutton equally 
sustaining. 
The reviving popularity of Bath makes Iford Manor not too 
difficult to reach. The nearest town is Freshford, about eight 
miles from Bath, and there you must ask directions. You will 
begin to follow them and decide that you are irrevocably lost 
because you are reaching a point in the grass-lane where the 
motor can neither go forwards nor backwards nor turn — so 
your trip is utterly ruined. Then suddenly, you come to a hump- 
backed stone bridge with an ancient gray statue on it looking 
off across the meadows. On the other side of the road is the 
Manor gateway and all you have to do is to go to the kitchen 
door, pay your shilling and make yourself at home. Mr. Peto, 
the proprietor, opens it for the benefit of Freshford Hospital. 
It is to be hoped but doubted that it means as much to the 
patients as it does to the garden's visitors. 
It is the loveliest garden imaginable, set up on a steep hill- 
side on comfortable gracious terraces. It is one of the few 
gardens that I saw this summer in England where the plant 
material was worth while. At Iford it is not only interest- 
ing but beautiful and charmingly planted and arranged. 
I am sure it is an owner's garden and that the owner has lived 
a long time in Italy. There are fantastic bits of old sculpture 
and iron work, tiny unexpected enclosures, seats and urns and 
pools placed with inspired precision and instinctive art. Ap- 
parently everything will grow on that mild sun-warmed hillside 
but each thing that does grow has been given its rightful place. 
It is an indescribable garden, so delicate and fine and beauti- 
ful that you are glad it is off the main-trodden road and that 
only people who really love gardens will bother to go to see it. It 
is one of those achievements that the most ignorant will admire 
— but only the knowing will adore. It is a gem in a beautiful 
setting, a sleeping beauty of a garden, a delight and an example. 
Go and see ; then you will forgive this lyric outburst. 
K. L. B. 
London, 
October, 1922. 
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