Leeds Castle in Kent, one of the most popular tourist attractions in Britain, is building a sun trap garden, designed to provide interest throughout the year. The Lady Baillie Garden is named after Olive Baillie, who acquired the castle in 1926 and marks the centenary of her birth. Lady Baillie launched a major restoration and preservation programme for the castle and its 500 acres of parkland straddling the Len Valley.

This work is continued today by the castle's current owners, The Leeds Castle Foundation. Historic maps reveal the site of the new

garden, now sloping down to the castle's Great Water, was maintained in the mid 18th-century as a knot-style garden, known as the Pigeon House Garden, and as a vegetable garden in the 1940s. This garden was subsequently replaced by Lady Baillie with aviaries. Following construction of new aviaries for the castle's important bird-breeding programme, the site became available for use as a garden once again.

The Lady Baillie Garden, costing £500,000, provides a striking contrast to the castle's world-renowned Culpeper Garden created in 1980 with its neat traditional English box hedging, exuberant herbaceous borders and herbs.

The new garden, designed by Chris Carter, of Colvin and Moggridge, is in its second year of planting and will be officially opened in May.

Special access routes had to be constructed to bring digging equipment to the site which, although covering some 1,900 square metres, was only 18 metres at its widest point.

The ragstone is now being used in other areas of the castle grounds. A new retaining wall was constructed using approximately 45,000 red bricks and 17,000 engineering bricks as well as precast concrete sections now hidden from view.

Two paths, at upper and lower levels, have been built for visitors to stroll through the new garden.

Access for wheelchairs and pushchairs has been included. Plans include complementing exotic plants with cast stone urns and statuary.

Chris Skinner, responsible for the Culpeper Garden, has incorporated the Lady Baillie Garden into his working brief. He said: "It has been a challenge -- particularly when we have been faced with wet weather and the unavoidable patches of compacted subsoil.

"However I am delighted to be working with new plants and creating such an important new feature -- particularly one that will attract both amateur and professional gardeners. My brief was to produce a memorable all-season garden."

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