Boughton House Garden

Boughton is a garden of lines, water and grass rather than flower borders, and that is exactly why it is worth the trip. The house was built to look like a 17th-century French chateau, and the grounds around it follow the same idea: a formal but calm design of strict geometry, laid out on the golden ratio, with wide lawns, flat sheets of water, long rows of trees and crisp earth shapes. Because the house was little used from the mid-18th century, much of this survived instead of being swept away for a later fashion.

Two modern pieces show how the old design is being brought back to life. Orpheus, made by the designer Kim Wilkie in 2009, is a huge inverted pyramid with a spiral rill, cut into the ground beside an older grassed pyramidal mount. In 2015 the Grand Étang, a lost lake of almost an acre with a 75-foot water jet, was recreated just north-west of the house to reflect its main front again. Restoration has also returned the River Ise to its 18th-century width, a job that needed two miles of green oak boarding.

Gardeners come away with ideas about scale and simplicity: how mown grass, a straight edge of water and a line of trees can do more than a crowded bed, and how earthworks can give a flat site shape. Walk out along the avenues and look back at the house to see the plan working. The estate covers some 11,000 acres, and the house opens only for guided tours on certain days, so check the official site for which parts of the grounds are open when you plan to go.