Location
Blewbury Water Garden is located in the garden of Millbrook Cottage, Berry Lane, Blewbury, OX11 9QJ.
Contacting Us
Unless very urgent, please do not phone us – we will answer all emails and respond to all bookings via This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. If you really need to phone us, please call 07853 212075.
Charge
Visits to the garden are free of charge, but we do ask for a donation to keep the garden going: costs to maintain it are in the order of £1,000 a month. To give you a guide, we’d ask £20 for a family of four, £10 for a couple and £5 for an individual. Please do contact us if you’re concessionary in any way.
Exclusive Visits
All visits to Blewbury Water Garden are exclusive: i.e., if once you have made a booking, the garden is yours to use with your chosen companions and no other visitors will enter the garden during that time. This is so that you can experience the garden in your own way as a place of quiet, healing and calm, without being worried by other visitors.
There is no maximum or minimum time to visit the garden: feel free to book a whole day if you’d like or just 30 minutes. Either way, it will just be you and your group.
The only other people you may encounter during your visit are the owners and residents, Philip and Anita Rendel, gardener Ron Hubbard and head gardener Jason Woodage. There is no need to interact with any of us, unless of course you’d like to!
Please note, first and foremost, that we cannot accept any visit to the garden other than by making a booking on our site, with at least 24 hours’ notice.
Opening Times
Generally, the garden is open 365 days of the year between dawn and dusk. Please do note we cannot accept any visit to the garden other than by making a booking on our site. You must please prebook before coming to the house or garden, at least 24 hours before you’d like to come. This allows us to get ready for you and make your visit as enjoyable as possible. If you’d like to visit Blewbury Water Garden, please view our booking calendar.
Bookings
Please note we cannot accept any visit to the garden other than by making a booking on our site, with at least 24 hours’ notice. There are two reasons for this: first, we often have to schedule dangerous work to trees or involving large machinery and clearly, we cannot allow visits at these times. Secondly, the garden and house are home to Philip and Anita Rendel and we’d kindly ask that you respect their privacy when they don’t wish to be disturbed. Third, all visits to the garden are exclusive (i.e. they are only for one group at a time) and we need to coordinate who is coming when, with sufficient time to prepare for the next visit.
If you’d like to visit Blewbury Water Garden, please view our booking calendar.
Filming and Photography
We’re very happy to offer the garden for filming and photography. However, we respectfully ask that if you wish to film or photograph for any kind of commercial reason or to distribute the images in any way (and this includes sharing photos or videos outside of friends or family) that you contact us first.
Tours
We generally do not offer tours of the garden: the space is yours to enjoy as you’d like. If however you’d like a tour from either Anita or Philip Rendel or head gardener Jason Woodage, please do contact us.
Parking
Parking is a challenge immediately at the house: therefore, you’re reasonably fit, we’d encourage you to please park at the Blewbury Village Hall for your visit, where parking is free (although overnight parking isn’t permitted).
Therapy Groups
We welcome visits to the garden by therapists (of any description) and their patients – the garden is filled with many healing and tranquil elements year-round. However, we do ask that therapists please disclose their use of the garden for professional reasons so that we can agree a small fee for the use of the space. Please contact us if you’d like to use the garden for therapy.
Classes
We welcome applications to use the garden for classes (for example, photography, art, dance, meditation, yoga) and would be happy to agree a rate with you. Please contact us if you’d like to use the garden to host a class.
Accessibility
The garden is almost completely flat with no steps: some areas have a very slight gradient. However, there are several trip hazards particularly near trees where roots make the ground uneven. Wheelchairs can access most of the garden but note that the lawns and grass paths are always wet (the water table is very high) and as such, if your wheelchair is very heavy or you as a user weigh more than 80kg, you may get stuck.
Also note that some of the bridges are not traversable by wheelchair and some of the paths are narrow. We’d strongly advise This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. first before your visit with details of your chair so that we can advise how wet the paths are and if a visit is a good idea for your intended date.
Toilets
We do not have any toilets available on site but they are available at Savages and The Blueberry.
Food and drink
The garden makes a great place for a pic-nic so please feel free to bring food and drink with you: there’s a paved area with a couple of tables and benches if you’d like to eat or bring a waterproof picnic rug for the lawn (it’s always wet and you’ll get a soggy bum if you don’t!). Please do make very sure, though, that you take all rubbish with you as we do not have bins in the garden or nearby.
We’d really recommend either having lunch or dinner at our excellent village pubs (The Red Lion or The Blueberry) or at the Savages Tea Garden. Savages also stock more than enough for the perfect pic-nic, so shop local and support the village!