Review: The Larmer Tree Gardens, Tollard Royal, Wiltshire

I celebrated my first wedding anniversary in June and as the day fell on a Sunday we decided to go back to our wedding venue, the Larmer Tree Gardens in Wiltshire. We attempted to recreate one of our wedding photos - albeit without the professional wedding photographer as you can tell!



We also enjoyed spending the day with my parents, sister and niece, who was still a bump inside her tummy on our wedding day. The weather was glorious on our anniversary - I was actually glad it hadn't been that hot on our wedding day!

It was great revisiting the different spots where we had had wedding photos taken, some of them with our guests but also a few secluded romantic ones by the dell.

 The Larmer Tree gardens have plenty of things to explore from pathways between hedges leading to statues, a pretty garden within a garden called the bride's quarter, an old stage dating from 1866, a dell (basically a pond with a beautiful view), a grotto an of course the roman temple where my husband I tied the knot. There's even a trail of fairy doors around the gardens for children to seek out.

The gardens were first open to the public as 'pleasure gardens' in the 1880s and 1890s then closed for most of the next century until 1991 - there's some fascinating information about the gardens' history on the website.

 
The main pavilion isn't normally open to the public; this is the new building behind the hedge from the main gardens where we had the wedding breakfast in one room and the band and dancing in the room next door, spilling out onto a terrace where people toasted marshmallows over a fire pit.

The peacocks rule the roost at the Larmer Tree and won't bother you mostly - they do sometimes try to steal food if you're not careful, but otherwise seem totally harmless. They are so used to people, they think nothing of strutting around and showing off their tail feathers and effectively posing for photos. Look up when you arrive and you will probably find one or two sitting on the roof of the visitor centre.

 

 There's a Café with seating both indoors and outdoors, that has a small selection of food, drinks and ice cream. My husband and I wanted to spend a bit of time at the Larmer Tree on our own before my family arrived and then were a little hungry as we hadn't had lunch, though we'd had a big breakfast and it was too hot to really want to eat. So we sat inside in the little Café (there were no tables left in the shade outside, and it really was too hot) and had a cheese scone (the hubby) and a piece of Victoria sponge (me). The cake was delicious - though you can bring your own picnics to eat on the grass in the gardens, the Café is lovely for a snack or, as we did later with my family, a drink and an ice cream.

 We bumped into our wedding planner (technically she is the head of events at the Larmer Tree, as they do all sorts of things there) who remembered it was our anniversary which was a nice touch, given how many couples they must see every year.

If you're in the Wiltshire/Dorset area I highly recommend the Larmer Tree gardens for an afternoon out - and if you are considering it as a wedding venue read my more detailed post about our wedding!