Future Events

Click here to book any of our future events online using a credit or debit card. If you have any questions or comments about our events, please contact us. Members must log in to receive automatic discount when booking.

Tenterden Gems CANCELLED – 16th June 2020 at 10:30

Location: CANCELLED

Cost: £55.00, Members £50.00 (to include coffee and lunch at Silcocks)

This event is fully booked, but you may register on the waiting list in case places become available.There are currently 6 people on the waiting list for this event.

Reighton Wood is a much lauded new garden designed by Marian Boswall. It’s a brilliant example of what can happen when owner, architect and garden designer work in harmony to transform a house and its garden in a promising setting to connect both with each other, and with the stunning landscape. Starting with little more than a field and overgrown pond, Marian has transformed the space into a garden filled with abundantly planted borders of dense grasses and herbaceous perennials, planted in drifts to echo the rolling countryside. Marian (who won last year’s Grand Award from the Society of Garden Designers for this project) will be our guide, accompanied by top horticulturist and RHS Wisley examiner, Caroline Jackson.
Old Place Farm is a stunning 4 acre garden in nearby High Halden, developed over the last 50 years by discerning owners Ann and Jeffrey Eker. Originally designed by Anthony du Gard Pasley (who was Ann’s principal lecturer at the Inchbald School of Garden Design), the garden surrounds a period farmhouse, and embraces topiary, a potager, parterre, a lake, ponds, and numerous mixed borders. Ann has more recently developed an intriguing woodland topiary
garden inspired by the extraordinary structures at Sericourt in Northern France. The whole garden is elegant and immaculate.

KGT contact Richard Stileman richstileman@btinternet.com 07968787950



Abbey Physic Garden and Belmont House CANCELLED – 30th June 2020 at 10:30

Location: CANCELLED

Cost: £55.00, Members £50.00 (to include lunch at Belmont. (Please note that although the Physic Garden does not charge for entry, we will be making a donation))

Book online. There are currently 14 places available for this event.

A day of sharply contrasting gardens! We start in historic Faversham and visit this very successful and relatively new physic garden, though please note that in this case ‘physic’ means a garden providing creative activity, comfort and companionship for the local community, including those with mental health issues. It is NOT a garden full of medicinal plants! One of the Trustees will explain the origin and mission of the garden, and Suzanne Campbell will talk about the garden itself.
We then travel the short distance to Belmont House for lunch, followed by a tour of the garden with Head Gardener Graeme White.
Belmont House (Grade 1), “Kent’s finest Neoclassical house” (Pevsner), built by Samuel Wyatt 1783-1793, lives up to its name, overlooking an extensive park with views to the North Downs. The estate was bought in 1801 by General George Harris, conqueror of Mysore, and owned by his family until 1995, and by a private trust since then. The garden has many distinct elements providing interest and variety throughout the year; the walled garden has long herbaceous borders and glorious roses and was restored in 2001 by Arabella Lennox-Boyd; the pinetum beside it contains a variety of ornamental conifers and a Victorian shell grotto. The kitchen garden is constantly evolving.

KGT contact Andrew Wells andrewwells@mere-house.co.uk 01622 814608



GARDEN PARTY CANCELLED – 18th July 2020 at 15:30

Location: CANCELLED

Cost: £10.00

Book online. There are currently 63 places available for this event.

By kind permission of Edward and Clare Barham

All members and their friends are invited to a splendid afternoon tea and to enjoy the magnificent year-round garden and extensive park, open exclusively for Kent Gardens Trust on July 18th £10 (please book in the normal way thus helping us cater appropriately)



The Salutation, Sandwich CANCELLED – 4th August 2020 at 13:45

Location: The Salutation, Knightrider Street, Sandwich. Kent. CT13 9EW

Cost: £30.00, Members £25.00 (to include a light tea)

This event is fully booked, but you may register on the waiting list in case places become available.There is noone on the waiting list for this event at the moment.

This Event is now CANCELLED. Please see News Item for details

We were very sorry to learn recently that The Salutation Hotel and Gardens have closed for the foreseeable future. However, we are delighted that Head Gardener, Steve Edney, has taken over the lease of the garden for the 2020 season and, together with a small team of volunteers, intends to honour any bookings that have already been made. Our visit on 4th August will therefore go ahead but has changed slightly (different tour leader and probably no cream in the cakes!) to reflect the reduced staff and facilities. We have adjusted our price accordingly.
We will be guided around the 3.7 acres, designed in 1912 by Sir Edwin Lutyens, by the Assistant Head Gardner and other long-standing members of the gardening team. The walled garden, widely recognised as amongst the finest in the country, was awarded RHS Partner Garden status in 2019. Originally laid out by Lutyens on the Arts and Crafts design of symmetrical “rooms” each with a different purpose, the garden now comprises a mix of old and new planting styles with surprises around every corner. Steve Edney, and his team inherited a neglected garden with unique challenges, recreating the original over many years. In 2013, a tidal surge caused the River Stour to burst its banks, leaving the garden under six feet of saltwater. 15,000 plants were lost and, during our tour, we will learn about the work required to bring about the miraculous recovery that visitors see today. The gardens are set against the extremely photogenic backdrop of Grade 1 listed Salutation and are access friendly. The Salutation Nursery specialises in exotic and unusual plants which are all grown organically and insecticide-free within the estate and are available to buy. After our tour, we will have tea and coffee with cake and are then at liberty to wander again around the garden.

KGT contact Alison Philip Alison@thephilips.co.uk 01732 491044



Wotton House and Albury Park near Dorking, Surrey – 22nd September 2020 at 10:30

Location: Wotton House RH5 6HS, then Albury Park, GU5 9BB both near Dorking, Surrey

Cost: £55.00, Members £50.00 (to include coffee on arrival at Wotton, and then a sandwich lunch at Wotton)

Book online. There are currently 3 places available for this event.

John Evelyn ( 1620-1706 ) was born at Wotton, ‘my most cherished place on earth’. The house lies in the valley of the little Tillingbourne river, west of Dorking. It has been owned by the Evelyn family since 1579, but has been extensively restructured and enlarged since then. It is now an hotel. In 1640 John’s older brother George created an Italianate garden around the house to John’s designs. Although major modifications have been made, key features of the original gardens survive, including the terraced mount and classical garden temple.
If time permits we will briefly visit Wotton Church which contains the Evelyn mausoleum.
Albury Park, with its Grade 1 registered park and garden (seldom open to the public), is just five miles from Wotton and also on the Tillingbourne It now belongs to the Duke of Northumberland. In the 17th century the estate was owned by the Earl of Arundel, a close friend of John Evelyn. Evelyn produced remarkable plans for the site which his friend duly followed, and much is still there today: extensive terracing (390 metres long!), a bath house, a semi-circular pool, and the unique tunnel, or ‘crypta’, an idea from Naples. Evelyn’s vineyards and canals were removed in the 19th century after the new owner Henry Drummond employed AWN Pugin to remodel the house. A collection of specimen trees was planted which in maturity are a serendipitous complement to the Evelyn elements.
We will glimpse the mansion - with its very distinctive Pugin chimneys - on our walk (it is owned separately from the park), and we will visit the exceptional Saxon Church.
We will be guided at both Wotton and Albury by Cherrill Sands and Brenda Lewis, both of whom were deeply involved with Evelyn when Surrey Gardens Trust marked the 300th anniversary of his death.

KGT contact Richard Stileman Richstileman@btinternet.com 07968787950



Fire, Plague and 17C London Life – 3rd October 2020 at 10:30

Location: Blackfriars Tube Station

Cost: £60.00, Members £55.00 (to include lunch near Tower Hill)

Book online. There is currently 1 place available for this event.

This tailor-made half-day walk with guide Diana Kelsey marks the 400th anniversary of the birth of John Evelyn, and 360 years from the start of Samuel Pepys’s diary. Both diarists, who became close friends, witnessed and chronicled some of the most turbulent years of London’s history and their diaries give an insight into both public and everyday life of mid-17th C London. However, the two men and their diaries were very different. Evelyn, aware of his position at the centre of English social and political life in the 17C and friend of Charles II, was more circumspect and restrained in his commentary on London. Pepys in contrast did not hold back from recording details of everyday high as well as low life including his own philandering!
The route of this walk is necessarily based on Pepys’s life (Evelyn lived downstream at Deptford), starting where he was born, weaving through the narrow alleyways along routes that he would have known, ending at the church where he is buried. Diana’s commentary will however draw extensively on both diarists’ eye-witness accounts of the Plague in 1665, the Great Fire of 1666, and the regeneration of the City after those cataclysmic events.

KGT contact Richard Stileman richstileman@btinternet.com 07968787950



Fire, Plague and 17C London Life (2) – 6th October 2020 at 11:00

Location: Blackfriars Tube Station

Cost: £60.00, Members £55.00 (to include lunch near Tower Hill)

Book online. There are currently 10 places available for this event.

This tailor-made half-day walk with guide Diana Kelsey marks the 400th anniversary of the birth of John Evelyn, and 360 years from the start of Samuel Pepys’s diary. Both diarists, who became close friends, witnessed and chronicled some of the most turbulent years of London’s history and their diaries give an insight into both public and everyday life of mid-17th C London. However, the two men and their diaries were very different. Evelyn, aware of his position at the centre of English social and political life in the 17C and friend of Charles II, was more
circumspect and restrained in his commentary on London. Pepys in contrast did not hold back from recording details of everyday high as well as low life including his own philandering!
The route of this walk is necessarily based on Pepys’s life (Evelyn lived downstream at Deptford), starting where he was born, weaving through the narrow alleyways along routes that he would have known, ending at the church where he is buried. Diana’s commentary will however draw extensively on both diarists’ eye-witness accounts of the Plague in 1665, the Great Fire of 1666, and the regeneration of the City after those cataclysmic events.

KGT contact Richard Stileman richstileman@btinternet.com 07968787950