This is the best time of the year to visit Sheringham Park, when its rhododendrons show their spectacular flowers.
The park offers fabulous displays of rhododendrons and azaleas; mature woodlands, with rare trees and shrubs;a Gazebo and viewing towers with fantastic coastal vistas and miles of scenic countryside paths.
The park was designed in 1812 by Humphrey Repton, one of the great landscape gardeners who followed Capability Brown. In all he created some 200 gardens and parks but it is said that Sheringham was his favourite and ‘darling child’. This garden is particularly famous as one of Humphry Repton’s greatest achievements. Planting began from 1850’s onwards. Repton’s principal design was to plant newly imported species of rhododendron and azaleas and this he achieved with great success. Humphry Repton was the first to use the term “landscape gardening” . E. H. Wilson added a collection of plants from China in the early 1900’s.
English Landscape Architecture / Landscape Garden
In the 18th century, England became the focus of a new style of landscape design. Figures such as William Kent, Humphry Repton, and most famously Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown remodelled the great estate parks of the English gentry to resemble a neat and tidy version of nature. Many of these parks remain today. The term ‘landscape architecture’ was first used by the Scotsman Gilbert Laing Meason in the title of his book on The Landscape Architecture of the Great Painters of Italy (London, 1828). It was about the type of architecture found in landscape paintings. The term “landscape architecture” was then taken up by JC Loudon and AJ Downing.
