Blakenham Woodland Garden is a delightful combination of traditional English woodland and many exotic trees, shrubs and flowers planted over a period of 50 years.
From early daffodils and drifts of bluebells to rare magnolias and camellias the garden offers an ever-changing pattern of colours and scents throughout spring and early summer.
Blakenham Woodland Garden is near Ipswich in Suffolk, just a short drive from the A14 and A12 trunk roads.
History of the Garden The Garden Today
John Hare, MP for Sudbury and Woodbridge bought the wooded hill next to his house in 1951. He had wanted it for years. He set about doing what he had long dreamed of, clearing brambles and nettles and creating glades and paths through the bluebells. He discovered that, unusually for the area, which is surrounded by old chalk pits, the soil in his own wood was "green sand" which allowed him to plant all kinds of acid loving plants like azaleas,rhododendrons and magnolias, most of which fare miserably in alkaline soil.
In the rough and tumble of a busy and successful political career, the garden was his solace and his refuge. He swapped and traded with gardening friends as all good gardeners do. He hunted down precious specimens. It is more than likely that the 20ft x 20ft. cornus [ Either C. 'Eddies White Wonder' or C.'Ormonde'] came from Kew where his good friend Sir George Taylor was director.
When he left politics in 1982 John Hare became Viscount Blakenham and Treasurer of the R.H.S. This allowed him to spread the net of his acquisitions ever wider. The garden is a map of his relationships. Tracing your way round the wood, these erodiums came from his good friend and neighbour the great Suffolk plantsman Oliver Wyatt. That rhododendron came from the great garden at Bodnant belonging to George Aberconway, with whom John Blakenham shared a more competitive relationship. He would very much have liked to be Chair of the R.H.S. himself, but Lord Aberconway was not inclined to move over. Other rhododendrons and azaleas came from Sir Eric Savill who directed the gardens at Windsor.
When John Blakenham died in 1982 the garden was made into a charitable trust in order to ensure the survival of his remarkable collection.