Kestle Barton Gardens

Our garden was designed by James Alexander Sinclair beginning in 2009. He brought two lorry loads of plants to Kestle Barton in early 2010, placing the plants on the newly prepared beds and leaving them for us to plant.

The garden is designed to be at its best during our open season from Easter to the end of October. Amelanchier trees and masses of white Narcissi ‘Cheerfulness’ arrive first, at about the same time as a carpet of cowslips covers our meadow.

Gradually, swathes of long flowering perennials and sweeps of tall grasses emerge between meandering paths, unfurling to reach their peak at the height of summer with masses of Knifofia ‘Tawny King’, Persicaria amplexicaulis ‘Firedance’ and Rudbeckia fulgida var. sullivantii ‘Goldsturm’. On an overcast day the colours seem even more vibrant, “even when it is drizzly it is still beautiful”, says Mr Sinclair. Much of the planting lasts well into the Autumn as seed heads form on the grasses and Phlomis russelinia and other perennials continue to provide visual interest as well as food for the birds.

Within the garden, circular Hornbeam hedges create intimate grassed spaces to picnic, play or to sit and dream. A granite stile leads to our small vegetable and cutting gardens.

The main garden opens onto the ever changing perennial wildflower meadow leading to a circular earthwork bank enclosing planted installations – in 2023 an annual wildflower meadow. For 2024 we are planning a planting of flax.

Adjacent to this is our orchard of Cornish Apple trees including the local Manaccan Primrose from which we press our own apple juice for sale in the Tea Shed – which provides visitors with a casual opportunity for light refreshment.

Many visitors are very keen gardeners, who take great interest in our planting scheme and enjoy perusing the pdf list we keep a hardcopy of in the office. Here is a pdf that you can download: KB Plant List 2022

National Garden Scheme

Kestle Barton was invited to participate in the National Garden Scheme in 2018. Since then we have been included in the ‘yellow book’ and have dedicated our donations on Wednesdays, during the prime season, to the NGS efforts to raise money for a range of charities including Macmillan Cancer Support, Marie Curie, Hospice UK and The Queen’s Nursing Institute.

Local venue for groups

Since the opening of Kestle Barton in 2010, the garden has been host to many local groups and ongoing activities such as the St Martin Book Club and the Peninsula Embroiderers (formerly the West Country Embroiderer’s Group), who come regularly to sit in the garden and sew with their talented members for hours at a time. Over the years, this group, in particular, has become a mainstay of our weekly summer schedule – and in appreciation of our venue the group have contributed to the garden with the gift of plants. In 2022 they funded the inclusion of the Summer Drummer alliums into our garden, on the advice of James Alexander-Sinclair. These extraordinarily tall alliums have brought a whole new layer of interest to the garden and we are delighted to see them returning again this season.

The garden is the central gathering space for most of the workshops, group visits and activities that form our programme, as well as the openings to our exhibitions.

Art in the garden

Over the years the garden has also been the site of sculptural installations, as an extension of the gallery space adjacent to it. In the very early years, while the garden was just getting established, the sculptural mobiles of Peter Fluck featured in the garden (2010-2011), and later Anthony Bryant’s wooden piece, Huddle, spent a season in one of the circular alcoves (2014).

Exhibitions that have featured sculpture in the garden over the years include: Michael Chaikin: Undulate (2010); In Abundance: Kestle Barton’s Flower and Vegetable Show (2011), Fertile Landscapes (2012) with glass artists Max Jacquard, Matt Durran; Site-Non_site NSA show (2012); Togetherness: Notes on Outrage (2017) included outdoor sculpture by Shaun Badham, Feet of Clay (2022) included outdoor work by Simon Bayliss and a sound/ceramic installation by Phoebe Collings-James, entitled Joy Comes With The Morning II. Also in 2022, the Gustav Metzger piece Mobbile occupied the garden after touring three other towns in Cornwall – positioned in our garden, it formed a significant part of the Earth Minus Environment exhibition (2022).

From September 2023 – June 2024 the gardens were the site of large scale sculptures by Abigail Reynolds that focused attention on the environment, in conjunction with further pieces in the meadow.

Stelæ is a group of three slender structures in blackened steel with mirrored insets that frame and reflect elements of the garden, pluralising our sense of place. Their cool geometry is a counterpoint to the cacophony of texture and colour in the garden. Elements of the garden are isolated by the mirror sections, which also reflect the passing viewer, whose image is scattered and mingled with the garden.