The website for Enfield and District Gardeners

Pre-booking Optional, Please click here to go to the NGS booking page to pre-book your tickets

Pre-booking Optional, Please click here to go to the NGS booking page to pre-book your tickets

Visitors are encouraged to explore historic Broomfield Park, directly opposite the garden with its lakes, wildlife, orchard, conservatory and magnificent views.

Pre-booking Essential, Please click here to go to the NGS booking page to pre-book your tickets

The main gardens are arranged around a central lawn with different colour themed rooms and borders, from the brilliant and bold to the soft and serene. There are 14 distinctive areas including garden rooms enclosed by yew hedges with yew arched entrances.

Alison uses plants as art to create colourful and harmonious pictures, each garden is unique in its design and plant pallet.

Around the house are the three symmetry gardens, rooms reflecting the Jacobean symmetry of the house, creating balance and harmony. All are planted in cool and serene colour schemes each with different layouts and plant design. In front of the house are the award-winning knot gardens.

In the main garden are more garden rooms with architectural features. In one, pebble mosaics tell a story, in another an Italianate theme with its palm and fountain are favourites with garden visitors, both planted in brilliant and bold colours. The use of topiary, water features, pots as statuary and vistas through the yew hedge arches continues the excitement.

Massive colour themed borders add drama from a blue and white herbaceous border to the exotic border with bold plants and the brightest of colours. Double borders in the spring walk are planted with peach and lilac colours. In spring massive plantings of tulips and alliums create drama.

The golden spiral landform is surrounded by silver birches and under planted with spring bulbs and wild flowers. With its backdrop of the blue and mauve borders the spiral creates another garden room without yew hedges and adds to the drama of the garden.

The woodlands, with ancient oaks and ornamental trees chosen for their rarity, leaf colour and autumn hues, were planted when the dead elms were cleared in 2000 and now provide the garden with a mature woodland walk.

A wildflower meadow surrounded by trees is filled with bulbs from the earliest winter snowdrops, through the spring with primulas and fritillaries, to wild flowers until autumn.

The two water gardens showcase a wildlife pond and stream offering a habitat for marginal plants. Created out of an old rubbish filled drainage ditch it is now a home for visiting moor hens and ducks.

The natural swim pond with dramatic marginal plants and water lilies is a haven of calm and tranquility and provides a habitat for wildlife all year round.

The owners are beekeepers, planting for pollinators and wildlife whilst the vegetable garden provides organic fruit and vegetables.

Thousands of bulbs are planted every autumn in pots and borders and Alison runs annual tulip trials.

The greenhouses store tender plants, provide protection for cuttings of less hardy plants and seed sown annuals and biennials for the borders and vegetable garden. All of this allows for successional planting in each season and along with bulbs planted for early spring to autumn ensures the garden has a long season of interest for garden visitors.

Garden featured in many publications inc The English Garden, Country Living, Homes & Gardens, Country Homes & Interiors, The Garden, Country Life & The Guardian. Prince Edward visited in 2018. Golds won in LGS & Enfield in Bloom competitions.

Pre-booking Optional, Please click here to go to the NGS booking page to pre-book your tickets

Pre-booking Optional, Please click here to go to the NGS booking page to pre-book your tickets

It was founded in 1963 by Edward Beale along with Frank Knight, Director of the RHS, and Derek Honour, arboricultural consultant to the GLC

They mapped out some 18 acres of the grounds into zones of conifers (Pinus, Picea, Abies, Taxodium), Sorbus, Quercus, Carpinus, Acer, Fraxinus, Cedrus and Tilia among many others, with over 800 species represented.

Some 50+ years and three generations of the Beale family later, the Beale Arboretum has matured into a wonderful collection, all correctly labeled for easy identification, and with a series of hard paths to make access easy.

Furthermore a further 18 acres has now been planted out with Liquidambar, Sorbus, Carpinus, Taxodium, Castinia and Quercus – this top field section of the estate is particularly quiet and it is hard to believe that one is inside the M25 !

Particular trees of note include a rare Taxodium Ascendens Nutans, an intact Cedrus Libani / Atlantica, and a very old Arbutus Unedo believed to date from 1760.

West Lodge Park is a beautiful country house hotel with delicious lunches and afternoon teas for visitors. Spring and Autumn open days have been held for over 30 years in aid of the NGS, while groups are escorted round the arboretum on a complimentary basis midweek, finishing with a nice tea in the hotel !

It is even possible to plant a commemorative tree in the arboretum, perhaps in memory of a loved one, or to celebrate a special anniversary, or the birth of a child.