Saturday 28 October 2023: Tripadvisor Review - Nymans

Saturday 28 October 2023

Tripadvisor Review

Nymans is a National Trust property, twenty miles north of Brighton just off the road to London. There appears to be ample free car parking, including plenty of parking spaces for Blue Badge holders. There are several places for refreshments, including a café and a tea-room. The toilets include accessible facilities and, unusually, a Changing Places toilet. There is the usual shop, plant centre, second-hand bookshop and, less usually, a small commercial art gallery.

The main gardens can be categorised in terms of formal gardens, informal gardens and parkland. Some of the formal planting is utterly delightful, and the number of paid and volunteer staff must be enormous. Not surprisingly, weddings are held here. Some of the less formal planting, such as an almost-canyon-like rockery, and the heath garden, are like a dream-world. In the late spring, there is a fantastic display of rhododendrons.

A good case could be made for Nymans to be considered an arboretum, for the range of trees, indigenous and exotic, is wonderful. In fact, part of it was planted as a pinetum, although I think that this was destroyed, along with almost five hundred mature trees and many shrubs, in the great storm of 1987. Around the western edge of the property there are many planted trees, which gives autumn colour interest. Across the road is a large area of scrubby original woodland, called the Wild Garden, with some 'rides' cut through it. I guess that this area offers city-dwellers the opportunity to experience raw nature. To the east of the gardens, the boundary blurs into estate parkland, and through a locked gate (for which one is required to obtain a numerical code from Reception), one is able to walk out into a huge, publicly-accessible wooded area that has obviously been curated, probably over centuries. I assume that the woodland is part of the High Weald woodland, and the Ashdown Forest (Winnie-the-Pooh) is only fifteen miles to the east). Colour-coded, dog-friendly, footpath routes dissect this woodland, at the bottom of which lies a wild lake ('Fish Pond'), in a natural river valley, on which I watched a heron fishing. A round trip takes at least forty minutes at a fair clip, and the numerical code is required to re-enter the gardens.

I have not discussed 'the house' at Nymans, much of which is a picturesque ruin, because I have not entered it.

Unlike at Sissinghurst, also National Trust, picnicking on the spacious lawns is permitted. However, as at Sissinghurst, Nymans is not a venue for a wet day out. In good weather, especially with good light, it is a superb place at which to fill one's digital camera memory card. If I lived within twenty miles, instead of eighty miles away, and could feasibly visit monthly, I would very happily do so.