9 Days Chelsea Flower Show & Great English Gardens

Day 1, Friday, May 21 – Welcome to London!

While London welcomes travelers through multiple airports, your garden trip  begins at Heathrow. From there, you’ll make your way on foot to the Hilton London Heathrow Airport hotel, right outside Terminal 4. It’s an easy stroll that lets you shake off the flight and feel the excitement of what’s ahead.

Be sure to arrive by 4pm, so you have time to settle in before the dinner call. It’s finally time to meet your fellow Carexplorers over a welcome meal – with a fun surprise or two that will have you entertained and sharing laughs like you’re dining with old friends. 

Accommodation: Hilton London Heathrow Airport
Included: Dinner

Day 2, Saturday May 22 – Chelsea Flower Show & The Garden Museum

Your garden enthusiast group will hit the ground running early today, as you enjoy a thrilling morning spent at the Chelsea Flower Show. Each year, this garden event attracts gardeners and designers from every corner of the globe. The show consistently celebrates design excellence with its Best in Show, Best Fresh Garden, and Best Artisan Garden competitions. The Great Pavilion, where nurseries and plant societies exhibit the best and newest in international horticulture, is not to be missed.

Last but not least, you’ll round off all your garden learnings at the Garden Museum. The museum is all about British gardens and gardening, with temporary exhibits and displays from its permanent collection. Here, you’ll find everything from ancient gardening tools to contemporary innovations. You’ll learn how gardens influenced entire societies. And you’ll follow the stories of the adventurous plant hunters who went to the far corners of the world to bring exotic plants back home.

Settle back into Heathrow’s Hilton tonight as you enjoy a well-earned dinner.

Accommodation: Hilton London Heathrow Airport (or similar)
Included: Breakfast & Dinner

Day 3, Sunday, May 23 – Long Barn Gardens and Gravetye

Long Barn is one of the quiet milestones in British garden history and the perfect place to start your private garden adventure. It was here, in the 1920s, that Harold Nicolson and Vita Sackville-West first developed many of the design ideas that would later reach their full expression at Sissinghurst. Set around a beautiful medieval hall, the garden combines Arts and Crafts structure with bold experimentation. Today you’ll meet one of the owners, who has been the custodian for two-decades. 

Then it’s onto Gravetye Manor. It’s a country house hotel where we’ll have a special lunch in its Michelin Star restaurant (included) after strolling the gardens with lovely views of the surrounding countryside. Created a century ago by Irish writer, designer, and owner William Robinson, the gardens were used to showcase his ideas about naturalism and wild gardening, contrasting untamed plantings with more structured areas close to the house. Today, the gardens have had an extensive restoration, but don’t expect a historical set piece. After a stint at Great Dixter, Tom Coward is the current head gardener and has boldly added experimental plantings, giving the garden a 21st-century twist.

Accommodation: Ashdown Park Hotel, East Grinstead (or similar)
Included: Breakfast, Lunch & Dinner

Day 4, Monday, May 24 – Fairlight End, Great Dixter and Sissinghurst

This morning, you’ll head to Fairlight End, a relatively new private garden set on land that slopes steeply from the house downward across wildflower meadows to a pond at the bottom. Chris and Robin Hutt, who bought the property in 2004, were baffled by the unwieldy topography and brought in landscape architect Ian Kitson, whose signature gesture is the curve. At Fairlight End, he inserted a single curvaceous corten steel retaining edge to separate the more refined garden close to the house from the wilder areas below. Fairlight End is not the only example you’ll see this week of the current English taste for wild gardens, but it is undoubtedly the most stylish.

Then it’s onto Great Dixter, perhaps the best-known and most loved of all English gardens. It exists as a living testament to the late owner, plantsman, and writer Christopher Lloyd’s life and passions. Head gardener Fergus Garrett, who worked for Lloyd during the last years of his life, carries on the tradition of experimentation that Lloyd started. Although this garden’s structure dates back to the early 20th century, the spirit of the plantings is most certainly contemporary. Under Garrett’s leadership, the garden is being developed and maintained to such a high level that you are unlikely to find any other garden like it. Great Dixter is a visionary, exuberant plant lover’s haven. 

Your last garden today is the iconic Sissinghurst Castle Gardens. These treasured gardens result from the commitment and imagination of writer Vita and her diplomat husband, Harold. In the 1930s, he planned the gardens’ architecture, and she filled it with lush, romantic plantings. Besides exploring the series of famous garden rooms, make sure you climb the tower and take in the panoramic views. From this vantage point, it’s easy to see why thousands of garden lovers consider a pilgrimage to Sissinghurst an absolute must.

Accommodation: Ashdown Park Hotel, East Grinstead (or similar)
Included: Breakfast & Dinner

Day 5, Tuesday, May 25 – Rousham & Broughton Grange

Today’s pace is a bit gentler, starting with Rousham Garden. This is the only 18th-century garden on your itinerary, considered by many to be the single best example of a landscape garden in the country. William Kent, the landscape designer who convinced England’s grand estates to ditch the formal approach and embrace natural landscapes instead, designed it in the 1730s. Little has changed over the centuries at Rousham. The views and accents Kent designed are still there for you to enjoy today. While wandering through it, make sure to leave enough time to check out the walled garden with its long double borders, pigeon house, and kitchen garden. 

Then it’s on to Broughton Grange Gardens, nestled in the tranquil Oxfordshire hills. Their fusion of historic charm and contemporary design captures many-a-gardening imagination. Originally developed in the 19th century as part of a private estate, the gardens underwent a transformative redesign in 2001 by renowned landscape architect Tom Stuart-Smith. The garden’s centerpiece –modern walled garden with carefully layered planting – contrasts beautifully with the older oak woodlands and Victorian glasshouses still scattered across the grounds.

Accommodation: Ettington Park Hotel, Stratford-upon-Avon (or similar)
Included: Breakfast, Lunch & Dinner

Day 6, Wednesday, May 26 – Pettifers & Free afternoon

This morning you’re heading to Pettifers – a stylish townhouse garden, that proves you don’t need decades of gardening experience to create something stunning. Owner Gina Price started in the early 1990s with a conventional, old-fashioned setup and barely any gardening know-how. Gradually, by visiting other gardens and asking for input from knowledgeable friends, Price began designing.

Walk through it now and you’ll see unusual plant combinations, vivid colors that shouldn’t work together but absolutely do, all held in place by a confident structure. Price admits the New Perennials Movement shaped her thinking, but says she couldn’t have a garden without English prettiness. At Pettifers, she’s managed to have both, and somehow, it all works. You’ll tour the garden with Polly, the head gardener, who knows every corner of this place.

The afternoon is yours. You don’t need to rush for any group visits. It’s your free time to explore Stratford-upon-Avon, the medieval market town where Shakespeare was born and where the Royal Shakespeare Company still calls home. Wander the streets lined with Tudor façades and thatched roofs. Check out the cultural sites tied to Shakespeare if that’s your thing… Or skip all that and browse the boutiques for something special to bring home. It’s your call.

Tonight, dinner is on us, so show up hungry and ready to compare notes on how everyone spent their free afternoon.

Accommodation: Ettington Park Hotel, Stratford-upon-Avon (or similar)
Included: Breakfast & Dinner

Day 7, Thursday, May 27 – Hidcote Manor & Kiftsgate

There are certain gardens that show up in almost every book about English garden design. Hidcote Manor Garden is one of them. And today, you’ll get to experience what all the fuss is about.

Lawrence Johnston, an American plantsman with a strong sense of design, started creating the garden in 1907. What he built is widely considered a masterpiece: a series of hedged, intimate outdoor rooms, each with its individual character, linked by narrow passageways that eventually lead to lawns and views of the countryside beyond. Throughout, Johnston didn’t just plant what was available locally; he went on plant collecting trips and brought back specimens that made Hidcote unlike anywhere else. It’s noteworthy that Hidcote, with its themed rooms, changed how gardens were made in England and still influences garden-makers today.

By afternoon, you’re at Kiftsgate, a garden shaped by three generations of women from the same family, each one leaving her mark while respecting what came before. Heather Muir started it in the 1920s with no formal plan, just instinct and a bold eye. Her daughter, Diany Binny, took over in the 1950s and added a semicircular swimming pool on the lower level, brought in sculptural pieces, and opened the garden to the public for the first time. Now it’s Anne Chambers, Binny’s daughter, who’s continuing the work. Her new Water Garden is a contemporary oasis, a proof that she’s not interested in preserving the past so much as pushing it forward into the 21st century.

Accommodation: Ettington Park Hotel, Stratford-upon-Avon (or similar)
Included: Breakfast, Lunch & Dinner

Day 8, Friday, May 28 – Wisley and Knepp Estate

This morning, you will travel to the Royal Horticultural Society Garden, Wisley in Surrey. For more than 100 years, Wisley has been a centre of British gardening excellence. Although the garden spans 240 acres, your visit will focus on the demonstration gardens, showcasing everything from stream gardens and meadows to double borders. In May, plantings of camassia, roses, peonies, rhododendrons, and azaleas are of particular interest. Also not to be missed are the perennial borders near the Glasshouse, created by influential designers Tom Stuart-Smith and Piet Oudolf.

Set within a pioneering rewilding landscape, you will then stop at the Knepp Estate. You’ll have a couple of hours to stroll through the Walled Garden — a more intimate space where Knepp’s rewilding principles are being explored. Its owners, Isabella Tree and Charles Burrell, have collaborated on this project with some of the leading minds in gardening, including Tom Stuart-Smith, Mick Crawley, James Hitchmough, and Jekka McVicar. Together, they are experimenting with ways to create complex habitats that support wildlife while allowing useful plants to thrive. The aim is to work with nature rather than control it — and you’ll experience what that looks like up close.

Wave goodbye to the countryside and hello to Heathrow’s Hilton. Tonight, you’ll celebrate your grand garden tour over our farewell dinner.

Accommodation: Hilton London Heathrow Airport (or similar)
Included: Breakfast & Dinner

Day 9, Saturday, May 29 – Departure Day

Your time together comes to an end, but garden lovers are likely to find inspiration wherever they are. Tour members can choose to return home or carry on the adventure.

Included: Breakfast

Optional Post-Trip Extension

Day 9 Continued, Saturday May 29 – Kew Gardens & London time

Kew Gardens is one of those places that rewards slowing down. You’ll spend part of your visit with a Kew guide, who’ll share the stories behind the gardens, point out some of the collections you might otherwise walk straight past, and explain why Kew continues to play such an important role in plant conservation today. 

Afterwards, you’re free to wander at your own pace, following whatever catches your eye, before regrouping for a central drop point so you can head out and explore London as you please. Meet your arranged transfer back to the hotel in the mid afternoon, or make your own way back when your day feels complete. 

Your overnight stay is included and tonight’s for spending it how you like.

Accommodation: Hilton London Heathrow Airport (or similar)
Included: Breakfast

Day 10, Sunday May 30 – Departure

Savour a final breakfast before departing the hotel for your onward flight. It’s just a short walk over to the departure terminal. An oh-so-easy finale to your English Gardens extravaganza!

Included: Breakfast