The Arboretum

The Arboretum, Walled Garden, Lakes and Cascades provide some fabulous backdrops for your wedding photographs…

With easy access to the Arboretum for the Coach House Garden, the picture perfect setting of Marks Hall Arboretum is just a stone’s throw away from your wedding reception, meaning your guests aren’t left for too long while you, the happy couple spend some time alone (with your photographer) to create perfect wedding photographs…

The 17th Century Walled Garden comprises five separate gardens, starting with an earth sculpture representing a new beginning, the start of the year. A Pittosporum hedge merges into the second garden, where it forms the backbone, snaking and dipping to provide support for plants such as feathery, purple Fennel and graceful fronds of Achillea ‘Moonshine’. The Pittosporum disappears through a hedge into the third and central garden. Here everything is strong and clear, where Amelanchier ‘Robin Hill’ shades the long stone seats. The line taken by the Pittosporum leaps across the garden through a series of spheres, first clipped box and then of stone. Most striking is the clipped box and stone table, from which right angles of Lavender grosso run, pierced by a contrasting line of Iris ‘Deep Black’. In the fourth garden the thread has become an undulating stonewall, and the planting is fiery red, orange, gold and yellow, where the colours last well into autumn. Finally the slate thread dives into a block of Hornbeam and disappears back into the earth, through a deep slate pool marking the end of the cycle. The Walled Garden provides some lovely wedding photographs, with beautiful colour all year round.

The Lakes were previously a series of three that have now been modified to form two, with brickwork dams and cascades. The lakes once contained a large stock of fresh water mussels and although these have gone, there is still a healthy population of Roach, Golden Orfe and Goldfish. Next to the lower lake is an original nuttery containing Cob Nut trees. This area is now a “spring flower area” with snowdrops, species of daffodils, cowslips and other wild flowers. The Lakes along with the brickwork dams and cascades create some perfect backdrops for your special day photographs.

We are happy for you to bring your photographer to the Arboretum in the lead up to your wedding so that you can plan where you would like to create some special photographic memories.