gardens-to-visit.com: Stockwood Park

Stockwood Park is a large urban park in Luton, Bedfordshire near to Junction 10 of the M1 motorway and is acclaimed for its period formal gardens, leading crafts museums and extensive golfing facilities.

Museums

Stockwood Craft Museum is housed in the 18th century stables of the former Stockwood House and the setting is well suited to the displays of rural crafts and trades which give visitors a flavour of life in Bedfordshire before the industrial revolution.

The collection of rural crafts and trades on display at Stockwood Park Museum was amassed by T W Bagshawe and is one of the finest regionally based collections in the country.

Stockwood Park is also home to the Mossman Collection of horse-drawn vehicles. The collection of over 50 vehicles shows the development of horse drawn road transport in Britain from Roman times up to the 1930s.

History

The park was originally the estate and grounds to Stockwood house, which was demolished in 1964.

When Stockwood house was built in 1740 by John Crawley, the grounds were laid out in a fashion befitting one of Bedfordshire’s leading landowners. The enclosed walled gardens provided shelter for growing fruit and vegetables for the house. One of the walled gardens now displays a series of gardens illustrating the changing styles of gardening through the ages.

Gardens

The Medieval Garden (12th to 15th century) shows herbs and plants grown for medicinal, cookery and dyeing uses. The 16th century garden is laid out in a knots, a typical feature of the Elizabethan garden. The knots were planted out with germander, hyssop and box with the open spaces filled with brick dust or crushed shells to contrast the greenery.

Clipped hedges and urns decorate the small formal Dutch Garden, replicating those designed by William Kent for Alexander Pope’s garden at Twickenham and the Wilderness Garden at Great Lindford Manor.

English 17th century gardens were heavily influenced by Dutch, French and the Italian styles. The Italian Garden is centered around a well head that once stood in front of Stockwood House.

The Victorian era was a time when plant collectors travelled the world in search of rare and exotic species and styles. Rock gardens and formal flower bedding schemes were also popular, decorated with a bright and showy variety of half-hardy plants. The invention of the practical mowing machine in the 1830s made lawns easier to manage and by 1860 were an essential part of garden equipment.

Stockwood is one of the few places where visitors can enjoy the work of international artist, Ian Hamilton Finlay outside his native Scotland. The Improvement Garden is a classical garden with sculptures full of allusions to ancient Greece and Rome.

Football, rugby, and golf facilities are available.