Things to do in the garden at Calke Abbey

Two visitors with a push chair and dog looking at a small donation stand in the garden — Visitors enjoying the garden over winter | © National Trust/Annapurna Mellor

Discover a vibrant and productive walled garden, look inside the faded glasshouses and explore Calke's fascinating collection of garden buildings.

Winter in the gardens

Enjoy the crisp winter weather on a stroll through Calke’s gardens.

Admire frost embellished beds, coating the gardens in a glistening carpet of white and look out for pops of winter colour, from holly and rowan berries to early blossoms in the Peach House. Follow your nose to find wintersweet and spidery witch hazels in the Pleasure Grounds.

Winter is a busy time for the gardeners, who you can often spot preparing the vegetable beds for spring or pruning wisteria, apple trees and roses, which form architectural skeletons along the brick walls.

Snowdrops

Snowdrops are always a special sight, signalling the start of the new season. Discover these little gems in the Pleasure Grounds throughout February. Walk along the paths and admire a sea of white petals carpeting the trees.

Watch where you tread

You can help us preserve Calke’s snowdrops by admiring them from the path, keeping your dog on a short lead, and leaving them in the ground. This will allow everyone to enjoy their beauty, now and in the future.

Continue into the Flower Garden to see a magnificent display of 50 different snowdrop varieties on the theatre, making for a great photograph.

Snowdrop display in ceramic pots on different levels — Snowdrops on the auricula theatre | © National Trust/Susan Guy

Faded grandeur in the glasshouses

Calke’s walled garden is home to several glasshouses. Peep through the windows in the Flower Garden and Physic Garden, or wander through the Orangery to experience faded grandeur. This is where exotic species were historically grown for both the table and display.

We’ve conserved several of the glasshouses to keep them watertight and this means they can be enjoyed for generations to come.

Gardener's buildings and Bothy

To get a real sense of Calke's historic working garden, don't forget to peek inside the Gardener's Bothy, where you'll find a vast collection of garden tools, pots and broken cloches – it's a gardener's heaven.

Calke's garden was once an industrial hub, and the remnants of the historic heating systems can still be seen today in the back sheds and Stove House. You may find that some sheds are closed off during winter – this is so that we can protect areas of the garden from heavy footfall during the wetter months.

Did you know there’s a series of tunnels beneath Calke's garden? One of the tunnels leads to the house from the back sheds under the Pleasure Grounds. It was built so that the gardeners could go about their work without being seen from the house. The tunnel is open for you to explore – but it's quite low, so mind your head!

Download the property map to guide you around the gardens.

Property map