Oxford Botanic Garden
Britain's oldest botanic garden, walled and green beside the Cherwell, in the shadow of Magdalen tower.
Britain's oldest botanic garden, walled and green beside the Cherwell, in the shadow of Magdalen tower.
Tucked between the High Street and the River Cherwell, at the foot of Magdalen tower, the Oxford Botanic Garden is the oldest of its kind in Britain, founded in 1621 to grow plants for teaching medicine. Four hundred years on it is still a working scientific garden, but it wears its learning lightly: what you find is one of the loveliest small green spaces in the country, an oasis of order and colour a few steps from the bustle of the High. Come in through the great stone gateway and the noise of the city simply falls away.
Inside the original seventeenth-century walls, deep herbaceous borders are arranged by plant family, banked with colour through the seasons and threaded with gravel paths and old stone benches. Beyond the walls the garden opens out towards the river, past a rock garden and a lily pond to a run of Victorian glasshouses, each its own little climate: a steamy tropical lily house, a fernery, a house of carnivorous plants, an arid house of cacti and succulents. There are over five thousand kinds of plant here in just four and a half acres, and yet it never feels crowded. It is a place to slow right down, and one of our favourite antidotes to a busy day sightseeing in the city.
Unlike Oxford's free university museums, the Botanic Garden charges for entry, with a ticket that also covers its sister site, the Harcourt Arboretum a few miles south. It is open all year round, though it keeps shorter hours in winter and the glasshouses can close a little before the garden, so it is worth checking the current times and prices on the garden's own site before you go. It sits right at the eastern end of the High Street, so it is an easy add to any day in the city, and it is at its most glorious from late spring through summer.
The garden sits in one of the prettiest corners of Oxford. Magdalen College, with its deer park and riverside walk, is right next door, and punts to hire are at the foot of Magdalen Bridge just outside the gate, for the classic Cherwell afternoon. The colleges, the Ashmolean and the covered market are all within a stroll, and a rooftop drink at The Store makes a fine finish. Our full guide to things to do gathers the rest.
“It's our favourite quiet half-hour in Oxford. Four hundred years of plants inside old stone walls, the tower above you and the punts drifting past. You come out calmer than you went in.”
A day in Oxford, and your own thatched cottage to come home to. Sleeps seven, less than a mile from Soho Farmhouse.