Seaforde Gardens are in Seaforde Demesne, the home of the Forde family since the early 17th Century. The visitor first enters a five acre walled garden, which is divided into two halves, through the North door. The exact age of this part of the garden is unknown but the large enclosing wall is recorded in an estate map as early as 1750.
The Northern half was formerly the kitchen garden, providing vegetables for the house and neighbourhood. It is now a large nursery with many rare trees and shrubs for sale.
The Southern half was originally a formal ornamental flower garden. This area was resurrected from a wilderness in the 1970s. On the Southern face of the wall, dividing the two halves, there was once a long facade of greenhouses, with a huge Camellia house in the middle; these alas have now gone but in their place are a good selection of plants and the site of the former Camellia house contains some large Sophora tetraptera and the original Camellia japonicas.
Further along this wall is the Mogul Tower, with a spiral staircase from which the garden can be viewed. Other notable plants on this face are Crinodendron patagua, Olearia x 'Zennorensis', Paulownnia fargesii and Rosa forrestii.
The centrepiece of this part of the garden is the Maze planted in 1975 with hornbeam (Carpinus betulus) hedges. The two entrances are delineated by two pairs of stone urns which had been used in the Victorian formal garden and the centre of the Maze is an arbour covered with Rosa mulliganii.Across the lawns and parallel with the maze are two avenues of Eucryphias. This garden holds the National Collection of Eucryphias and there are over 20 varieties grown here.
These white or pink Southern hemisphere trees are one of the glories of this garden in late summer and autumn. The gardens are blessed by a mild climate and many semi tender plants such as Dicksonia antartica (tree fern) can be Grown and also contain many plants collected in the Far East in recent years.
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