Helmingham Hall has been the home of the Tollemache family since the 1400s and is one of Britain’s most impressive gardens. Leading garden designer and multiple Chelsea Gold winner Lady Xa Tollemache will give us a personal tour of the beautifully maintained, extensive, walled and moated gardens, part of which date back to the sixteenth century. Next, we visit the moated Columbine Hall in its romantic, pastoral setting. Norfolk-based garden designer George Carter advised owners Hew Stevenson and Leslie Geddes-Brown on the lay-out of the garden which includes pleached lime and hornbeam hedges and a richly planted kitchen garden. After lunch in its ancient black feather-boarded barn, we travel up the road to Wood Farm, a 500-year old Suffolk farmhouse. Here the owner Emily Shelley has transformed an arable field into a huge flower meadow whilst her front garden is a mass of informal planting, including roses, hollyhocks and paeonies, hiding a layout of paths. We return to The Swan for dinner together.