Highbullen Hotel, Golf and Country Club are proud to be offering The Country House and Garden Tour of North Devon. This is a new and exciting opportunity to discover this often overlooked corner of Devon.
A mid-week break enables you to enjoy the houses and gardens avoiding the busy days of the weekend. We are offering a 4 night stay including a full English breakfast and a three course Dinner in our graceful dining room overlooking spectacular views of the Devon countryside.
You will be chauffeured in one of our luxury cars, selecting a route that shows you the beautiful, and often wild, West Country landscape. The chauffeur will be knowledgeable and do his utmost to answer any question you may have!
You will be free to investigate each garden at your own pace, enabling you to spend time in the areas of the garden that particularly interest you. We do advise wearing good walking shoes as two of the gardens have steep paths. All the gardens offer seasonal planting from the winter Hellebores, through spring bulbs, camellias, roses, and herbaceous plants, to the warm russet colours of autumn. There is something special in every season.
All the gardens offer light hot and cold lunches, created using either home-grown or local produce. Perhaps you could even indulge in a delicious cream tea for which Devon is famous!
When you arrive back at Highbullen we encourage you to make use of our enviable facilities to help you truly relax; whether making use of our Spa or playing a leisurely round of golf on our award winning course. You could swim a few lengths in our indoor heated swimming pool or relax in front of a log fire in our elegant drawing room reading the papers. The choice is yours.
Please call on 01769 540 561 or email welcome@highbullen.co.uk for more information. 

Since 1990 the RHS have created a garden meticulously crafted and planted which both complements and contrasts with the mature planting of the previous owner, Lady Anne. The original gardens are very much a plantsman’s garden created over a period of 30 years with a collection of 4,000 plants from around the world.
Few other gardens demonstrate such a wide range of interest throughout the year, with both formal and informal gardens, exuberant herbaceous borders, cottage gardens, a herb garden, a potager, a winter garden, vegetable garden and many more, including a rose garden containing 2000 roses of 200 varieties! The dramatic backdrop of steeply wooded valley sides offers choice plants the warmth and shelter offered by the south-westerly aspect and high ground to the north. All your senses will be stimulated as you wonder amongst the gardens.
This is a garden still evolving following the master plan created by Elizabeth Banks Associates, with new areas created each year. The outer areas of the garden consist of natural woodland and parkland melting into the north Devon countryside, enveloping the Formal and Themed Gardens, the Stream and Lake Garden and Vegetable Garden. You will certainly find inspiration here.
Do visit the Library which contains 1,000 volumes on all aspects of gardening and design, along with 40 current gardening magazines.
There really is much to interest you for a full day here.

Hartland Abbey was built circa 1157, and was the last Abbey to be dissolved in 1539 when Henry VIII gifted it to the Sergeant of his Wine Cellar. The house has descended to the present owner via a series of marriages and remains a welcoming, lived-in family home.
The Abbey was extensively remodelled in the 18th and 19th centuries but you can see Mediaeval, Queen Anne, Georgian, Regency and Victorian architecture, with pictures, furniture and porcelain collected over the ages. There are even documents dating from 1160AD but the house still exudes warmth, with many family photographs and memorabilia everywhere.
There are woodland gardens either side of the house, leading to the 18th Century Walled Gardens. A small gate in the topiary leads to four intimate gardens, with roses, perennials, shrubs, tender and rare plants as well as fruit and vegetables. In 1996 the family discovered paths and terraces leading to the Bog Garden and Victorian Fernery, created by Gertrude Jekyll when she was a house guest. There are beautiful walks to the rugged Atlantic Coast, scene of many a shipwreck.
The grounds have featured in Gardeners World as well as the BBC production of Sense and Sensibility and more recently Bargain Hunt and Top Gear. The Antiques Road show is to be filmed here this summer.

Docton Mill can be traced back to Saxon times, probably before the Norman Conquest. The exquisite private garden has been created since the 1930’s around the mill pond, leats, waterways and River Speke that flows through it, set in a steep valley with wooded sides. The river flows for a further mile before it gushes over the dramatic waterfall at Speke’s Mouth and into the sea sixty feet below. The waterwheel still turns and was cast in Bideford over 200 years ago. Sadly the mill ceased functioning on a commercial basis in 1910.
In spring the daffodils rise above the wild undergrowth of ferns, bluebells, campion, wild garlic and violets. There is a wonderful collection of hellebores, camellia, azalea, pieris and rhododendron, highly suitable for shade on acidic soil.
In summer the riverbank billows with native ferns and wild flowers and the bog garden is a fabulous fusion of astilbes, primulas, hostas and ligularia.
The Rose Bank and 140m Herbaceous Borders are planted in hues of pinks, silver and lavender with the fragrant rose Felicia richly perfuming the air.

Ring the doorbell to enter this house built in 1822, designed in Palladian style by a local architect for Colonel John Chichester, a forebear to Sir Francis Chichester, the around the world yachtsman.
Once inside the house, one sees a home redolent of the high Victorian era. Rosalie Chichester inherited at the age of sixteen and lived there mostly alone for sixty eight years. She has left the N.T. a nationally-important collection of model ships, one of the finest collections of pewter in the country, a remarkable collection of seashells and many more treasures, amongst which is a watercolour by William Blake lost until 1949.
The stable block houses N.T. Carriage Museum, a collection of over 50 vehicles, including the remarkable Speaker’s State Coach almost entirely covered in gold leaf, used at state occasions from the 1700’s to the marriage of Charles and Diana in 1981.Uniquely, carriage rides are offered around the grounds with the groom offering interesting facts about Arlington life.
The house sits in extensive grounds, which have evolved from Tudor gardens through to Gardenesque and Victorian style. Do visit the recently restored walled kitchen garden which supplies cut flowers and vegetables for the estate.

Marwood Hill is a very special private garden covering 20 acres with three lakes, set in a valley with superb views. The gardens were created in the 1950’s by Dr Jimmy Smart who was awarded the prestigious RHS Victoria Medal of Honour.
The swathes of snowdrops in early spring are enhanced by the beauty of the white bark of the birch, followed by the stunning displays of camellia (over 800 cultivars, the largest collection in the country with over 100 mature, tender camellias in the greenhouse), magnolia, rhododendron and cherry blossom in late spring.
The lakeside and bog garden are awash with drifts of Primula, the national collections of Astilbes, Iris, Hosta and Ligularia. Over recent years the stream garden has been extended with new plantings of grasses and perennials.
The walk up to the further areas of the garden is well worth the effort- you will be rewarded with a spectacular prairie planting scheme alive with butterflies in summer and autumn.
The garden abounds with wildlife and birdsong- a true haven of peace and tranquillity.

Dates

30 May – 3 June
27 June – 1 July
18 July  – 22 July
14 August – 18 August
19 September– 23 September
3 October – 7 October

Pricing

£695 each if 2 people share (twin or double bed arrangements) in the Manor House
£795 for solo travellers