The University of Bristol and Hestercombe Gardens
The Institute is a collaborative venture between the University of Bristol and Hestercombe Gardens Trust. The University is unique in that it offers the only full-time postgraduate Garden History course in the country and has, therefore, become the nation's leader in the academic field. There is a strong intellectual community within the Department of Archaeology and Anthropology, which currently has 15 Garden and Landscape History PhD students and, at any one time, over 40 MA students working in the discipline under the teaching and supervision of Dr Timothy Mowl, Director of the Institute. The Department also offers postgraduate MA courses in Landscape and Historical Archaeology. Research activity is chanelled through a series of conferences and study days held at the University and, subsequent to the establishment of the Institute, at Hestercombe. With a Humphry Repton landscape garden at the Royal Fort, its own Botanical Garden, and the eighteenth-century Goldney Garden famous for its Grotto with all its shells, crystals, statuary and waterworks in Clifton, the University is well placed for intellectual activity in gardens and designed landscapes.

The landscape at Hestercombe, just outside Taunton, is also unique in having three complete and separate period gardens on one site — the eighteenth-century landscape garden,  the nineteenth-century formal terrace, and the twentieth-century formal garden designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens and planted by Gertrude Jekyll between 1904 and 1908. All three gardens, together with a further 50 acres of woodland have been, since September 2003, under the direct management and control of an independent charity, the Hestercombe Gardens Trust. In addition to the ongoing restoration of the landscapes, which are open to the public, Hestercombe offers a series of practical study days and courses in conservation and restoration.

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Top: The Canal and Gothick Tower at Goldney

Bottom: Coplestone Warre Bamfylde's view of his eighteenth-century landscape garden at Hestercombe