Garden centres · Westmorland and Furness
Larch Cottage Nurseries
An Italianate dreamscape of a nursery hidden in an Eden Valley hamlet — Romanesque walls, a chapel, and one of Britain's deepest plant collections.
★★★★★Gem 7/10Westmorland and Furness
About
The story
Nothing about the quiet hamlet of Melkinthorpe prepares you for Larch Cottage. Since 1984, landscape designer Peter Stott has built not just one of the most comprehensive plant collections in Britain but a whole world to hold it: Romanesque walls and Italianate pillars that look centuries old, arches wrapped in climbers, a hand-built chapel, and terraces where rare shrubs and perennials grow in painterly abandon. The restaurant, La Casa Verde, looks out over it all like something transplanted from Umbria. Gardeners cross the country for plants they can find nowhere else; everyone else comes away wondering how such a place stays secret in a Cumbrian back lane.
Our word
Why Hunters selected it
A single-owner nursery of national horticultural standing that is also a genuinely astonishing place to stand in — the definition of editorially interesting.
Perfect for
- Garden Lovers
- Hidden Gem
- Coffee & Cake
- Photographers
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