Capel Manor Gardens — Attraction in London

After a hiatus of more than 20 years, I recently took the chance to revisit a childhood favourite. My abiding memories are of getting lost in the excellent hedge maze, running around the forested areas, and exploring the multitude of model gardens.

Capel Manor have installed many new features in the last two decades, including a fake ruined manor house (with multiple laminated brochures dotted around on pedestals, advertising sections of faux-medieval fireplace, hauntingly broken windows and charming old turrets that YOU TOO could install in the back of your suburban semi!) and some newer model gardens. The rustic Provençal goatshed was particularly lovely.

But sadly many of the gardens look dated or are a couple of years overgrown, and sections of the grounds are poorly signposted. It's too easy to wander into some half-ruined (for real this time) portakabins or neglected back areas, like the very dated fairy forest. Two gardens, walled clipped yew hedging, exemplify problems with the whole site: one is orderly, and cleverly arranged into a string of topiary-framed garden 'rooms', but six months overgrown. The other is neatly maintained, but blighted by an ugly, misproportioned layout that hasn't been reconsidered in decades.

The canteen has a good selection of snacks, but the typical harsh sodium lights and dates furnishings of an institution more given to hosting school trips than to competing for high quality family outings. The shop is full of stock that should have been binned before I did my GCSEs. In a final sad note, the hedge maze was closed too, although in fairness this was due to coronavirus restrictions.

The small but lovely zoo, the sheer copiousness of Capel Manor's model gardens, and the many instances of incredible design - the spectacular avenue of pleached lime, for example - mean it is still well worth a visit from next spring.

Hopefully by then the coronavirus lockdown will be followed by some significant investment and a helping of volunteer enthusiasm. Capel Manor could do with both to bring it...

The main attractions that brought us to this place, were the mini zoo and the maze.

The Mini zoo is quite a small area with only a handful of animals to look at. Could of monkeys, a few meerkats, a wild cat, an owl, a parakeet/budget, goats, guinea pigs, and a lovely white parrot that can mimick a "hello". This area is very well kept.

The maze, which is fairly small, by comparison to others. Our youngest kids still managed to get a bit lost after running off.

There's also a "fairy garden", which is quaint enough. Had a few little trinkets but mostly it was just sign posts of fairy pictures with a poem. I feel a little more imagination could be used in this area to give it more life and interest.

Other than that, the gardens are expansive.. We kept finding ourselves turning down this pathway and that, into yet another little pocket of a beautiful garden, with waterfalls and lily pad ponds and gorgeous flowers.

We also stumbled upon an art exhibition which we ended up staying for. The kids were invited to draw pictures to add to the wall. And we were asked to pick our favourite painting from the exhibits and entering them into a ballet box.

The customer service was extremely welcoming. Toilets are available at reception and couple of locations further onto the grounds. Everything seems very well maintained and clean. The place was also very quiet, despite it being a midday Saturday visit.

As someone else mentioned, the addition of a play area for children might encourage more visitors, as we were one of only 3 or 4 other families we saw...

A lovely place to wander around in nature. The gardens are beautiful with a wide range of trees and plants. Some of the trees are huge, they feel as if they’ve been there for centuries, which some of them might have been!

We enjoyed the small zoo, which has an interesting array of animals. The kookaburra was hilarious when it started calling out and the goats were very entertaining with their head butting. The children that were there seemed to be having fun exploring the gardens and seeing the animals.

The gardens are wonderfully calming, there’s a fairy forest, woodland path, walled garden, a holly maze, lake and so much more. Saw several people just sitting enjoying the views and the calm.

At the start of your visit there is a small shop where you can pick up indoors and outdoor plants. Once through the doors you have the cafe and toilets. The cafe is functional, but only serves cooked food between 12-2, which does limit you if you’re planning on eating there. Drinks and snacks were available after that. Just outside the cafe is an area you can sit and eat and around that area are a number of small gardens which are lovely and each one is very different.

One of my favourite parts of the gardens is the area with the ruins of the old Manor House which explains some of the history. Also around the site are several folly’s, on closer inspection what looks like an old ruin turned out to be much more recent!

A lovely day out and I’ll be...