Vicarage House Norfolk will open the garden in 2024 under the NGS banner

We have been invited by the Norfolk National Garden Scheme to open the garden to the public in summer 2024. The plan is to do a pop-up opening in June, when the roses and main borders are at their best. The main opening will be the first weekend in September when the dahlias, salvias, gaura, persicaria, modern hydrangeas and sunflowers will be in their prime. The garden has great structure with long beech hedges and topiary.

There will be yellow signs on the roads to direct you to the garden. There is parking at the house and in the village next to the village school. Please see ngs.org.uk/Norfolk for more information. Follow NGS on Instagram and Facebook for up-to-date information.

We intend to serve teas, coffees and cakes in aid of the charities supported by the very worthy charities supported National Garden Scheme which include MacMillan Cancer Support, Parkinsons UK, Marie Curie, Hospice UK, Carers Trust and the Queen’s Nursing Institute.

Visitors will be able to enjoy the main walled garden with its generous borders and the two borders to the side of the house, each side of the terrace. There is a row of yew barrels and behind are pleached White Sorbus.

They will be able to enjoy their cake and tea on the teak table in Pool House garden. This has eight matching beds, three surrounded by box hedging with rosa Sir Paul Smith growing up Tristan May metal obelisks. In these box squares are dahlia Tangerine and tall, dark Chat de Noir.

Beside the tennis court is a semi-circular cutting garden with raised beds jam packed with dahliasincluding George Howard, dahlia Café au Lait, dahlia Karma Choc, dahlia Chat de Noir and many others. We also grown sweet peas and wall flowers.

There is an arboretum with several interesting trees including majestic acer Princeton Gold, three Acer Brilliantissima, a very unsusal oak brought as an acorn from the Pope’s country garden. There is also a beautiful weeping Salix and a Foxglove tree.

There is a long border to the rear of the walled garden filled with hydrangea Annabelle, interspersed with perennial fushias and edged with hostas, perennial geraniums and lady’s mantle. This leads to another long border, to the front of a low brick and flint wall. This is cottage garden in style with hollyhocks, buddleia, dahlias, swathes of perennial geraniums and oxeye daisies.

To mark the opening, we have expanded the white border along the semi-circular wall which is below the gravel garden. It contains rosa Blanc Double de Coubert, Agapanthus Twister which starts blue and turns white, Gaura Whirling Butterflies and white dahlias. Earlier in the season, these borders are full of snow drops, then bluebells, followed by a wonderful show of tall white alliums.

Vicarage House Norfolk is ranked one of the top 25 holiday homes in England by VisitEngland

In September, the team at Vicarage House Norfolk were honoured with the Visit England Rose Award.

We were invited to an awards ceremony in September 2023, by Visit England, formerly the AA ranking agency (AA rosettes etc.) The house or more importantly the team who run the house, have been marked out for their exceptional customer service, going above and beyond for our guests.

The ceremony took place on a hot, early September day at the historic and very beautiful Great Fosters in Surrey. We are 5* rated by VisitEngland and have been since 2020. Also, we have achieved VE Gold for the last three years. This places us at the very top of English holiday houses, judged on comfort and quality. We score more than 98 out of a possible 100.

The 5* award reflects everything from the quality and comfort of the beds, the crisp Egyptian cotton bed linen, fluffy white towels, designer crockery, the quality of the furniture and carpets, the paintings. All the things that make a stay at Vicarage House special. Glass from William Yeoward, Oka and India Jane, nothing from IKEA or Sainsburys! The Gold Award is conferred because our grading for all the 5* features is above 98%.

The Rose Award is presented to give credit for all the extra things we offer our guests. The house is a home from home. No need for our guests to cram their cars with equipment. From cupboards full of comestibles, tablecloths, linen napkins, swimming towels, a drinks’ trolley, the spectacular garden, croquet set up and ready to play, tennis balls and racquets, a swimming pool full of toys and a games room full of toys and screens all contribute to this award. The fact the fires are laid on arrival and all logs and kindling supplied for the stay is another thoughtful deed.

Booking restaurants and pubs, securing caterers, laying tables, putting cut flowers in the bedrooms and in all main room, providing bicycles. Guests can play badminton, table tennis, croquet or boule and never need to bring equipment with them. It all adds up. It is why many guests return.

Latest News from Vicarage House

We have been eagerly awaiting the new wooden gates into the walled garden.  Monarch Gates did a superb job on the drive gates so they have been commissioned to create the gates into the walled-garden.  They were hung on Thursday 17 December and look very smart. 

While we are on the subject of wooden structures, my four, six foot statuesque wooden obelisks were delivered on Friday 18 December, painted in Farrow and Ball Little Dix Blue from Wooden Obelisks in Framlingham.  These will be located in the long borders in the walled garden and the plan is to grow a white climbing rose – it has to be Iceberg from Peter Beales, a chalcedony blue clematis from Thorncroft Nursery, up the road at Dereham and some sweet peas for cutting and putting in little vases in the bedrooms.  There is nothing to surpass their fragrance and jewel-like colours. 

And the icing on the cake is our new gardener who starts in January – Will studied horticulture at Nottingham Uni.  He works at lots of very special gardens locally, some of which are open to the public through the NGS so we are on our marks ….  A photo diary of the garden will be posted from early March onwards.

Vicarage House in January!

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The gardens at Vicarage House are enjoying a makeover

The gardens at Vicarage House are enjoying a makeover over the winter in preparation for our visitors next year.  Last weekend we planted new Peter Beales roses. One the front elevation another deep red and fragrant rose (the colour goes so well with the pale Suffolk white brick) – Rose Souvenir de Claude Denoyel.

We planted Wretham Rose which was discovered growing wild in the garden of our friends’ house in the next door village.  It should do really well in the ovoid rose bed outside the kitchen window.  Louise Clements was located in the same rose bed in front of the house, a perfect hot orange, deeply-petalled and scented.  Savoy Hotel – crisp, starched and pink like their napkins and Just Joey – a divine orange in the pots outside the Pool House. 

We have just planted numerous Trachelo Spermum Jasminoides – the jasmine with the evergreen leaf which turns red in the Autumn and emanates the most mesmeric scent in summer from its tiny star-shaped flowers.  Three large plants in the walled garden to mask the white wall and three along the end of the tennis court which should make your game a bit more exotic and a fragrant experience!  There is lots of Trachelo Spermum on the walls in the walled garden, growing around the Pool House bedroom windows.  It should be a perfumed summer.

Down the drive, we are adding some more large globes of luscious green box, interspersed with box pyramids.  In the Spring, these will be intermingled with Peeping Tom daffodils, which will be emerging before Christmas if the temperatures don’t drop from the prevailing 15 degrees!