The Tudor Front Facade

Just a few miles from two internationally known great gardens, Sissinghurst and Great Dixter, made famous by their media-savvy owners, lies Pashley Manor, a less well-known garden in the English Country Garden style.

The owners, the Sellick family bought the manor with its overgrown and neglected garden in 1981, and with their friend, Anthony du Gard Pasley set about redesigning the garden. They were passionate hands-on gardeners and by 1992 the garden was ready to open to the public, but neither client nor designer sought the razzmatazz of their more illustrious neighbours.

The Vegetable Garden

Anthony Pasley had studied under Brenda Colvin, and then worked with Colvin and Sylvia Crowe on a wide variety of domestic and industrial landscaping projects. He designed private gardens throughout Britain, but also in Switzerland, and the South of France, and then helped Rosemary Alexander establish the English Gardening School in 1983, where he was a principal lecturer. He was a regular columnist for Country Life and the Observer, an author, a principal judge at the Chelsea Flower show, and lectured at many other design schools.

It was ten years later, in 1993, when I studied at The English Gardening School at The Chelsea Physic Garden that I became acquainted with Anthony Pasley. His modesty, sharp wit and understanding of space and plant knowledge were a great source of inspiration to me. We all do things we later regret. At the Chelsea Flower Show I got very drunk, went up to him, flung my arms around him and gave him a big kiss. He was deliberating the merits of a show garden with a group of fellow judges. He froze, whilst his fellow judges looked on in bewilderment.

The Rose Garden

The Hot Borders

I have visited Pashley Manor previously, but never at the right time of year. There is a saying in the gardening world – ‘you should have come and seen it last week,’ and I missed the Tulip Festival, (set out with over 40,000 tulips), the mid-June Special Rose Week, the Kitchen Garden Week and until this year, its spectacular late-summer display of over 1000 dahlias, sensitively planted into herbaceous borders rather than more typically planted together in display beds.

The Garden Vista

Because of the display bed style of dahlia planting, I’ve never been a great fan of them, seeing them as flowers to be cut rather than used creatively. Pashley Manor in late-summer was a revelation to me.

Dahlias

The approach to the Grade 1 listed house is down a gently curving drive, to what looks like a 1920s Arts and Crafts inspired mansion, but in fact dates back to the 1550s, and has a somewhat tenuous link to Anne Boleyn. The imposing south-facing Georgian façade was built in the 1720s, and the garden retains historical features, such as the ha-ha and the lake (a remnant of the medieval moat).

Dahlias

Like many English Country Gardens of its type, it combines garden rooms with vistas over the countryside and more informal wooded areas. You are skilfully but unconsciously led through the various rooms, such as the swimming pool garden, rose garden, vegetable garden, the ‘hot borders’ planted in vibrant colours and down the long herbaceous borders. This is a hallmark of a great designer, and Anthony Pasley’s renowned attention to detail is to be found everywhere.

The Bluebell Walk and Classical Temple

A more informal strolling path, known as the Bluebell Walk, lies to the other side of the garden, with a series of ponds and the lake. There are strategically placed pieces of sculpture and a small round classical temple.

View from the Summer Tea Terrace

James Sellick, who worked closely with Anthony Pasley on the garden died in January 2025, and new generations take over with new ideas. Pashley Manor is a fine garden of the 1980s and 1990s, and both the fashion for grasses and informal prairie style planting of the early 2000s, and the garden wilding movement have passed it by. Not a bad thing, this garden has taken a different route, has much to teach and delight us and I hope it keeps developing in its own distinctive style.

RJ – 28 August 2025

Garden Details:

Website: pashleymanorgardens.com

Address: Pashley Manor Gardens, Ticehurst, East Sussex TN5 7HE

Café: A Garden Room Café and Summer Tea Terrace overlooking the garden

Dogs: Not in the gardens

Disabled Access – Wheelchairs are available, but sloping gravel paths and steps

Opening Times: 1st April to 30 September, Tuesday to Saturday, 10.00 – 5.00pm