Bide-a-Wee Cottage

Three generations of the Robson family have created the garden, which is laid out around an old sandstone quarry, once filled with rubbish and now a supremely sheltered spot, with a pool fringed with primula, gunnera and rodgersias. This is a wonderful plantsman’s garden, with a wide range of plants from azaleas in spring to agapanthus and nerines in late summer. The garden has an enticing nursery selling desirable plants.

Capheaton Hall

The south front of the house, dating from 1668, is Mannerist in style, while the plainer, but very grand, north front is late 18th century. The glory of Capheaton is the walled garden. A tall brick south-facing wall supports espaliered fruit trees and the beds are filled with vegetables and flowers. In the middle of the garden another wall supports a working glasshouse that, in a final flourish, has a spectacular display of pelargoniums.

Bitchfield Tower

The battlemented pele tower is 14th-century, restored in the 1930s. It is attached to a hall house built in 1622, which, at the end of the 17th century, was given a new six-bay façade with an elegant pedimented garden door opening onto a walled garden of the same date. A rill runs between cypresses underplanted with box and iris, before cascading down towards a substantial lake.