A HIDDEN corner of one of the UK’s top gardens is being replanted for the first time in nearly 20 years.

Visitors to Arley Hall will be able to see the Herb Garden transform over the coming weeks as more than 1,000 herbs are planted.

Head Gardener Gordon Baillie said it was an opportunity for anyone from Mid Cheshire to ask questions about how to create their own herb garden.

“Sometimes an area of the garden just needs to be refreshed and that is what has happened with the corner we have dedicated to herbs,” he said.

“Visitors can see the garden transformation happening throughout spring and are welcome to ask us for the secrets of creating a successful herb garden.”

Arley opened its gates to visitors again this week after months of preparation in the gardens and hall.

Heavy rain delayed progress on the Herb Garden so now Arley’s visitors will get a unique chance to see it develop into a new feature.

For nearly 100 years after it was first installed it was a children’s garden, but then was redesigned in 1969 making a central feature out of a stone ornament that once sat on top of a building in Piccadilly Circus.

The obelisk still takes centre stage, but all around it things are changing.

When Gordon’s work is done there will be new carpets of thyme, rue, myrtle, chives, lavender, rosemary, sage, juniper, 10 types of mints and a drift of oregano.

“When it is complete it will also look as good as it smells, but in the meantime there is plenty to interest everyone as the next chapter in this garden’s history is written,” he said.

BREAKOUT BOX

A FEW things you might like to know about Arley Hall and Gardens.....

•Arley Hall has been in the family of the current Lord Ashbrook for 500 years.

•A panel of international judges awarded Arley Hall and Gardens the Special Award of the Foundation Schloss Dyck at the 2011 European Garden Heritage Network awards. The gardens were commended for their ‘unusual blend of long history and traditional design with inspired modern ideas and additions’.

•Arley is world-renowned for its herbaceous borders – thought to be the first of its kind in England – and the Ilex Avenue of 14 cylindrical evergreen holm oaks.

•Our hall and gardens are popular with film crews. Everything from a Coronation Street funeral to a Hollyoaks party to Who Let The Dogs Out for the children’s BBC have been filmed here.

•The present Hall stands on the same site as the first house built by the family in 1469. Lord Ashbrook, the great great grandson of Rowland Egerton-Warburton who built the present Arley Hall, grew up in the Hall as a child and spent some time as a young man living there.

•Couples can get married inside and outside at Arley. The herbaceous borders provide the perfect, most colourful aisle for any bride to walk down.

•Amongst the finest in Britain and Europe the gardens have been created over the last 250 years by successive generations of the same family and thus offer an unusual blend of long history and traditional design with inspired modern ideas and additions.

•Within its eight acres of formal gardens, which can take you several hours to meander around, there are many different areas, each with its own distinctive character, on the NE side of the house, beyond the Chapel is The Grove, a well established arboretum and a Woodland Walk.

•Plants from Arley’s gardens are sold in the nursery on site, which is owned and managed by Lord Ashbrook’s sister, Jane Foster.