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Levens Hall

Nearest town: Kendal

Site type: garden

Access: Public

Church name: No Data

Diocese: No Data

County: Cumbria

Country: England

Grid ref: SD49588506

Lost yew site: No

Date visited: 28-Jun-17

Recorded by: Tim Hills

Protection & responsibility: No data

Yews recorded at this site: Notable

Notes: Here is the 'finest, oldest and most extensive topiary garden in the world. There are over 100 pieces, each clipped to an unusual and individual design.This is the area which makes the gardens of Levens Hall unique- a surreal and fantastic living sculpture gallery. Some of the trees and bushes are three hundred years old and the layout of this garden has changed little since their planting and initial training in the 1690s. Then, it was really fashionable to have a garden in the Dutch style with clipped greens set in a pattern of formal box edged flower beds. Fashions changed by the 1730s however, and most similar gardens were ripped out to make way for the new trend of natural landscaping. Amazingly this garden survived that purge, was enhanced in the 19th Century, and continued even through the economic pressures of the 20th Century'. www.levenshall.co.uk. Fourteen photos are available here.

Levens Hall

Yew trees at Levens Hall: