"Development of the gardens commenced in 1973, when Simon Sainsbury and Stewart Grimshaw appointed American garden designer Lanning Roper. Roper's distinctive design features are evident throughout, with clear structures, elegance and restraint being the principal elements used within the layout.

"His sweeping changes included the replanting of the west herbaceous borders and construction of the garden rooms.

"From 2000, Julian and Isabel Bannerman were employed to develop the Pleasure Ground area. This area developed over a period of ten years to become an ideal environment for exploring, full of unique architectural structures that blend harmoniously into the surrounding rock and water."

“The Heatherwick Glasshouse ... stands as a crowning achievement in contemporary design, to house the flora of sub-tropical south west China at the end of a path retracing the steps along the Silk Route, from temperate Europe and across mountains, arid lands, and high pastures, that brought the plants from their native habitat in Asia to come to define much of the richness and glory of gardening in England.  

“Joining the William Pye water sculpture and Philip Jebb’s noble neo-classical folly, both monuments to the fallen great trees that they succeeded, the Heatherwick Glasshouse and new Silk Route Garden imbue Woolbeding with even more delight, beauty and pleasure for all who come, in what Disraeli called ‘the loveliest valley in the land’.”  

National Trust

Maybe it will grow on us...