Treasure Houses Win at Hudson's Heritage Awards 2014 - HIGHLY COMMENDED: Woburn Abbey Gardens for The Woburn Abbey Garden Showl Win the Award for BEST EVENT

Woburn Abbey Garden Show

WINNER:  Woburn Abbey for The Woburn Abbey Garden Show

BEST EVENT

The gardens team at Woburn Abbey wants to gain international recognition for the garden in its own right not just as an adjunct to a famous great house. Like all heritage gardens its history is complex, successive designers, including Humphry Repton, Henry Holland, Sir Jeffry Wyattville, and Percy Cane, have all had a hand in it.

The annual Woburn Abbey Garden Show in June is now in its fifth year and is a gardeners’ Garden Show, not only in the practical approach it offers its visitors but because it is an enterprise entirely organised by the gardeners. The show has popular talks by influential contemporary gardeners like Pippa Greenwood and Diarmuid Gavin. In 2013, the team added a Potted History of the Gardens to the Garden Show exhibits, telling the story of the design and restoration of different areas of today’s gardens in a series of 9 giant flower pots specially planned to explain the character and period of each element of the gardens’ history; a simple clever way to tell the story of its past and of the 9 year restoration programme which is still ongoing..

2014 Hudson's Heritage Award Winners

About Hudson's Awards

The Treasure Houses Of England

The Treasure Houses of England are 10 of the most magnificent palaces, houses and castles in England today. Together they attract in excess of 2.8 million visitors annually.

Members are Beaulieu, Blenheim Palace, Burghley, Castle Howard, Chatsworth, Harewood, Hatfield House, Holkham Hall, Leeds Castle and Woburn Abbey.

One of the most compelling features of the Treasure Houses of England is that they all offer the visitor a living history. Most are still homes to the great families who have owned them for generations. Others keep their heritage alive by re-creating scenes and events that have dominated and shaped England from the 9th century to the present day.

Between them they house some of the most important art collections in the world with famous works from artists such as Van Dyck and Gainsborough. The connoisseur of fine furniture, porcelain and china will find priceless examples of Chippendale, Wedgwood and Meissen.
Each house is an architectural masterpiece surrounded by beautiful parklands and gardens.