Great Comp Garden is a Georgian farmhouse and garden, located on Comp Lane near the hamlet of Comp in Kent, England. It was developed by Roderick and Joyce Cameron in the 1950s, and features an Italian garden. It opened to the public in 1968, and now holds regular garden festivals and outdoor theatre productions.
Great Comp Garden is the creation of the late Roderick and Joyce Cameron (formerly Joyce Trafford Riggall),after they moved to the 17th Century Manor in 1957 (which has been Grade II* listed since 1952),with the idea of developing the garden into a plantsman?s delight. The house was once a farmhouse, the stables has been converted into the Old Dairy Tearooms.
They originally started with 4.5 acres, and in 1962 and 1975 added more land to the garden.They created an Italian Garden, explorable ‘ruins’ and ‘temple’ (all hand built by Roderick), using sand and stone from the garden.The ruins and statuary (including Pope’s Urn and Longleat Urn), add interesting focal points to the densely planted garden.
The garden has very good displays of magnolias (they have over 30 varieties of this shrub),Azaleas, salvias, crocosmias, dahlias and other exotic plants in the region.They have planted up to 380 shrubs and trees in the garden.
The garden first opened up to the public in 1968. It had an entrance fee of 10p and had around 200 visitors on the opening days.The garden then opened for the National Garden Scheme, which it still opens on certain days for.