Arundel Castle Gardens

Arundel's gardens are some of the most inventive in the south of England, and they keep changing. Under head gardener Martin Duncan, who has worked here since 2009, the team has added a stumpery, a tulip festival, a restored water garden and new tropical borders, and the gardens won the Historic Houses Garden of the Year award in November 2025 by public vote.

The centrepiece is the Collector Earl's Garden, designed by Isabel and Julian Bannerman and opened in 2008. It has Italianate terraces, water rills, oak-domed pergolas and Oberon's Palace, a pavilion with a shellwork grotto and a fountain that lifts a golden crown on its jet of water, surrounded by tropical borders. Close by are the English Rose Garden with scented David Austin roses, gothic gates and arches, the Fitzalan Chapel White Garden, pastel herbaceous borders between yew hedges, and the Organic Kitchen Garden, now edged in lavender. The 1852 Vine House holds grape vines, peaches and a pelargonium collection. Look too for the botanical Stumpery made from trees felled in the 1987 storm, the Cut Flower Garden, the Wildflower Garden and the restored stew ponds, now a water garden with a thatched roundhouse and boathouse.

Gardeners will find ideas everywhere, from replacing diseased box with lavender or yew to bold tropical planting in a cool climate. There is a cafe, coffee shop and Garden Tea Terrace, and picnics are welcome in the grounds.