30 THE ENGLISH GARDEN SEPTEMBER 2019
opened to the public in 2000. After Van Kampen’s
death, The Daly family bought Hampton Court
Castle in 2006, intent on preserving the character
of the gardens while opening the castle itself to the
visiting public.
Simon’s design unified past and present. He
introduced water into the gardens, linking previously
fragmented areas while adding a sense of movement
and musicality. He drew water up to the top of the
garden from the nearby River Lugg, pumping it into
the revised Dutch Garden’s new long, rectangular
pool, which was formerly Arkwright’s tennis court.
From here, the water cascades down staircases
and through canals and spills into the heart of
the Walled Flower Gardens, which are broadly
cut with a lavender-edged waterway. Twin hand-
crafted oak pergolas, built by local craftsmen,
straddle the water and are accessed by a series of
wooden bridges. These o er glimpses into a series
of compartmentalised Elizabethan-style flowering
knot gardens and parterres, with each themed
enclosure incorporating di erent colours and styles.
The water then courses swiftly underground,
beneath a huge, undulating yew hedge, which runs
westwards, parallel to the walled garden, trapping
billowing lavender, lemon-themed herbaceous flower
borders and the surviving 19th-century wisteria
arch in between. Finally, with a flurry of streams,
falls and pools, the water resurfaces in the former
Victorian fernery, which is now the Sunken Garden.
You can walk right behind the waterfall and enter a
subterranean passage that Simon created to connect
to a three-storey, stone, gothic-style viewing tower,
which is the epicentre of the 21st-century maze.
More than 1,000 yews were planted to create
the classic horticultural puzzle which, on scrutiny,
bears Van Kampen’s initials. Scale the tower for a
bird’s-eye view of the gardens and you can start to
piece together this intricate garden jigsaw before
attempting to fathom your way out.
In late summer, it is two contrasting garden
rooms that draw the greatest attention. In the
kitchen garden, the informal tangle of ripening
fruit, vegetables and flowers is warm and mellow. In
complete contrast are the soothing blues and greens
of the clean-cut Dutch Garden, enveloped in emerald
yew and bisected by
a rectangular mirror
of still water. It’s lined
with rectangular box
parterres and decorated
with box quatrefoils,
a design directly
lifted from the castle’s
ballroom ceiling. In the
middle of each parterre,
and underplanted
with lavender ‘Little;Mth a flurr]
SJ streaQs
Jalls and pSSls
the water
resurJaces
Mn the JSrQer
Jerner]
Above Water cascades
and courses throughout
the garden, eventually
emerging in the sunken
former fernery.
Below Globes of
Echinops bannaticus
‘Albus’ attract bees
to the kitchen garden.