6 x 4 Little Moreton Hall Garden

The earliest reference to a garden at Little Moreton Hall comes from an early 17th-century set of household accounts referring to a gardener and the purchase of some seeds. Philip Moreton, who ran the estate for his older brother Edward in the mid-17th century, left a considerable amount of information on the layout and planting of the area of garden within the moat, to the west of the house. He writes of a herb garden, vegetable garden, and a nursery for maturing fruit trees until they were ready to be transferred to the orchard at the south and east of the house, probably where the orchard is today.

During the 20th century the long-abandoned gardens were replanted in a style sympathetic to the Tudor period. The knot garden was planted in 1972, to a design taken from Leonard Meager’s Complete English Gardener, published in 1670. The intricate design of the knot can be seen from one of the two original viewing mounds, common in 16th-century formal gardening, one inside the moat and the other to the southwest.  Other features of the grounds include a yew tunnel and an orchard growing fruits that would have been familiar to the house’s Tudor occupants – apples, pears, quinces and medlars. Wikipedia