Wedding Photographer The Newt in Somerset — the Parabola Garden, the Walled Kitchen Garden and the Manor House
The Newt in Somerset near Bruton is England’s most acclaimed and most elaborately restored country estate of the twenty-first century — a former Georgian country house at Hadspen in the Somerset countryside between Bruton and Castle Cary, re-created since 2013 as a luxury hotel estate with a new Parabola Garden (‘the most beautiful garden in England’ — The Times), a restored Victorian walled kitchen garden of 3.6 acres, an apple orchard of 125 varieties and a cidery, all set in the characteristic fertile vale of South Somerset’s mixed arable and pasture. For The Newt wedding photography, the Parabola Garden’s spiralling geometric planting beds, the walled kitchen garden’s Victorian glasshouses and the manor house’s Georgian facade provide portrait settings of English country house garden making of the highest contemporary quality.
The Parabola Garden, the Walled Kitchen Garden and the Glasshouses
The Parabola Garden — the new formal garden created 2013–19 in the valley below the manor house, with the radiating parabolic beds of seasonal planting following the mathematical parabola curves, the central water feature and the surrounding hedged garden rooms — provides the Newt’s primary garden portrait setting: the geometrically planted beds’ seasonal colour (spring tulips through summer perennials to autumn dahlias), the garden’s overall structural formality and the south Somerset vale visible above the garden’s hedged boundaries create portrait compositions of contemporary English garden design of the very highest contemporary quality. The Victorian walled kitchen garden’s restored four acres — the heated glasshouses, the espalier fruit walls and the cutting garden rows — provide a second enclosed garden portrait setting.
The Apple Orchard, the Cidery and the South Somerset Vale
The Newt’s orchard of 125 apple varieties — the heritage cider apple orchard on the estate’s south slope, with the rows of gnarled apple trees’ grass-grown orchard floor providing portrait settings of considerable seasonal variety from blossom in April through the summer canopy to the harvest copper tones of October — provides an estate portrait setting of English cider orchard character available at no other contemporary luxury hotel estate in Somerset with the same scale and variety. The cidery and cider barn’s working production facility provides a specific orcharding-heritage portrait backdrop. Bruton town’s medieval church and the Hauser & Wirth gallery in the converted farmyard (2 miles) provide nearby portrait destinations.