The New Naturalism Tour 2025 is like no other tour on offer, anywhere in the world. Theme based - with a focus on naturalistic perennial planting - it embraces a huge variety of celebrated public, private and teaching gardens, including Great Dixter, Iford Manor, Sissinghurst, Knepp Castle Walled Garden, Chatsworth, Long Barn and the private home gardens of celebrated designers including Tom Stuart-Smith and James Hitchmough.

Throughout the tour Michael will call on some of the best perennial practitioners of the UK to help deliver the Travelling Masterclass, including Charlie Harpur and James Hitchmough.

Please note, the final itinerary is subject to change.

DAY 1 | Monday 1st September

The tour will start with pre-dinner drinks and a three course meal in the private dining hall of the Richmond Hill Hotel.

The relaxed gathering will allow participants to become acquainted, and Michael to set the scene for the tour to come.

Meals included: Dinner at Richmond Hill Hotel

Accommodation: Richmond Hill Hotel

DAY 2 | Tuesday 2nd September

Today is dedicated to the home of the RHS, the fabulously instructional Wisley. Where else can you see and compare a traditional perennial border, double Piet Oudolf borders and a huge planting by Tom Stuart Smith on one location?

The visit to Wisley will be followed by an afternoon drink around the corner at the Anchor, an enchanting canal-side English pub. The evening is free for you to enjoy the charms of Richmond. 

Gardens: Wisley

Accommodation: Richmond Hill Hotel

DAY 3 | Wednesday 3rd September

This morning we’ll be visiting the home of internationally renowned designer and three-time ‘Best in Show’ winner at Chelsea, Tom Stuart-Smith. ‘The Barn’ provides an intimate insight into Tom’s own evolution and experimentation, from his signature combination of clipped plants amongst very soft perennial plantings, through to recent work with direct-sown prairie. We’ll also visit the burgeoning community plant library.

This afternoon we’ll experience arguably the worlds most famous Botanic Gardens - Kew, where Australian Richard Barley, in his role of Head of Horticulture, has overseen some fabulous changes. The most notable, perhaps, is the addition of two enormously long herbaceous borders that give a nod to both traditional perennial planting, and to current thinking, incorporating many ornamental grasses.

Gardens: Tom Stuart-Smith’s Home ‘The Barn’ & Kew Botanic Gardens,

Accommodation: Richmond Hill Hotel

DAY 4 | Thursday 4th September

After checking out of Richmond Harbour Hotel we’ll head to the garden and gallery of Hauser & Wirth, Durslade Farm. Featured in ‘Five Seasons - The Gardens of Piet Oudolf’, Hauser and Wirth reveals one of Oudolf’s more recent plantings in the UK, covering a huge field of the old farm, and morphing from areas of quite blocky planting into others of a diffuse and gauzy fuzz.

Following lunch at Hauser & Wirth’s restaurant - the fabulous Roth Bar and Grill, we’ll head to Stourhead, where one could argue that a celebration of naturalism started. Stourhead was amongst the very earliest of the 18th Century English Landscape gardens, which saw the sweeping away of many grand old formal parterres in favour of an idealised vision of nature. Unfolding faultlessly around a valley in which sits an impossibly beautiful lake, we are the beneficiaries of a vision that was always going to take centuries of tree growth to realise.

Following Stourhead we’ll head to Bath.

Gardens: Hauser & Wirth, & Stourhead

Meals included: Lunch at Hauser & Wirth

Accommodation: Bath

DAY 5 | Friday 5th September

This morning we’ll visit Iford Manor, the creation of, and the home garden of, the great British architect-turned-garden designer Harold Peto, who was a master of the Arts and Crafts style. Like all of Peto’s gardens, an abundance of exquisitely designed stone structures provide the most perfect background for loose, apparently spontaneous planting.

When Paul Bangay heard that we were going to visit Iford, he told us that we just had to have lunch there, given the quality of the restaurant. So we are!

Gardens: Iford Manor

Meals included: Lunch at Iford Manor

Accommodation: Bath

DAY 6 | Saturday 6th September

James Hitchmough taught at Sheffield University for about 30 years, where he birthed the influential ‘Sheffield School’ of planting, using perennials en masse, frequently sown in situ. Recently retired, he’s establishing a new home garden in which he’s incorporating all the most sophisticated ideas developed over years of world-leading teaching. This morning we’ve been invited to check on it’s progress!

The afternoon will be at your leisure in Bath.

Gardens: James Hitchmough’s home garden

Accommodation: Bath

DAY 7 | Sunday 7th September

After checking out of our hotel in Bath we’ll journey to Chatsworth. The seat of the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire has for centuries been a landscape spectacle, being the place where Joseph Paxton (who eventually designed the Crystal Palace) cut his teeth. But most pertinent to our theme is the fabulous replanting of the rockery, recently completed by Tom Stuart-Smith. It’s a very different setting in which to see such perennials, but they more than rise to the challenge and look perfectly at home - as if this was always the intention.

Following the visit we will travel on to Sheffield.

Gardens: Chatsworth

Meals included: Dinner at Silversmiths

Accommodation: Mercure Hotel, Sheffield

DAY 8 | Monday 8th September

Sheffield has long been in an economic slump, but in recent years great efforts have been made to beautify the inner city appropriating the skills of the ‘Sheffield School’ of planting, with inputs from such luminaries as Nigel Dunnett and Zac Tudor. Roadsides are being narrowed, and in some cases closed off, to allow for great corridors of highly seasonal perennial planting. We’ll follow this inspirational vein of planting, on foot. 

Garden: Sheffield - Grey to Green

Meals included: Lunch at Vero Gusto

Accommodation: Mercure Hotel, Sheffield

DAY 9 | Tuesday 9th September

Heading south today, but stopping en route to visit one of the most influential of all gardens in this naturalistic planting movement - Beth Chatto’s garden in Essex. Beth passed away in mid 2018, but her legacy is stronger than ever.  As a pioneer of unapologetically beautiful ecological planting, Beth was almost a lone voice, prophesying the future of garden design.  This garden was her laboratory and playground.

After Beth Chatto’s we’ll head to Tunbridge Wells where we’ll be staying for the remainder of the tour.

Garden: Beth Chatto’s garden and nursery

Meals included: Dinner at The Ivy

Accommodation: Tunbridge Wells

DAY 10 | Wednesday 10th September

After lunching at the fabulous Knepp Wilding Kitchen, we’ll experience the astonishing walled garden at Knepp Castle - designed by James Hitchmough and Tom Stuart Smith around the castle at the centre of the world-leading rewilding project, beautifully documented in owner Isabella Tree’s book Wilding. 

Our visit will be guided by head gardener Charlie Harpur.

Garden: Knepp Castle

Meals included: Lunch at Knepp Rewilding Kitchen

Accommodation: Tunbridge Wells

DAY 11 | Thursday 11th September

Today's journey will lead us through the visionary creations of Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson, as we embark on a delightful exploration of their gardening legacy. We start out where it all began for Vita and Harold - Long Barn, their first home and garden together.

In the afternoon our path takes us to the iconic Sissinghurst Castle, Vita and Harold’s pièce de résistance. It’s really Delos that we’re here to see - that part of the garden recently reimagined by Dan Pearson, in naturalistic Mediterranean style - but the whole garden is wildly enchanting and not to be missed. 

Gardens: Long Barn & Sissinghurst

Accommodation: Tunbridge Wells

DAY 12 | Friday 12th September

Great Dixter, where Christopher Lloyd, Great Dixter’s longest-term and most influential custodian/creator, never stopped experimenting or pushing boundaries of accepted wisdom or good taste. 

During a very special visit, including parts of the 500 year-old house that the public don’t normally get to see, we will hear how Christo’s legacy lives on, and why Dixter plays such a critical role in the horticultural world.

Gardens: Great Dixter

Meals: Farewell celebration dinner in Tunbridge Wells

Accommodation: Tunbridge Wells

DAY 13 | Saturday 13th September

Heading home, or onwards! Check out of the hotel at your convenience.