Hampton Court Palace Gardens & Maze

Sixty acres of formal gardens sit inside a loop of the Thames, with 750 more acres of deer park beyond. Garden entry is part of standard palace admission — and so is the Maze.

The Maze, planted around 1700

Commissioned for William III and designed by George London and Henry Wise, the Maze is the UK’s oldest surviving hedge maze: a third of an acre of yew, trapezoid in plan, taking an average of 20 minutes to crack. It was planted as part of the Wilderness pleasure garden and is the only piece of it that survives. Originally hornbeam and later replanted in yew, it was famous enough by the Victorian era to earn a chapter of comic misdirection in Jerome K. Jerome’s Three Men in a Boat.

The Great Vine, planted 1768

At the end of the Pond Gardens stands a glasshouse built around a single plant: a Black Hamburg grape vine planted in 1768, when Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown ran the gardens. It is the oldest and largest known grape vine, and it still crops — until 1920 the grapes went exclusively to the royal table; today they are harvested and sold to visitors from late August to mid September.

The Privy Garden, restored to 1702

The monarch’s private garden, returned to its exact appearance under William III: clipped parterres, marble statuary, and Tijou’s wrought-iron screens at the river end. It is the most precise piece of garden archaeology in Britain — stand at the palace steps and you see what a king saw.

The Great Fountain Garden and Long Water

On the east front, Wren’s palace looks down an avenue of giant clipped yews across the Great Fountain Garden to Long Water, the canal stretching more than half a mile into Home Park. The yews were meant to be modest cones; three centuries of growth turned them into the mushroomed giants that define the view.

The Magic Garden and the family side

The Magic Garden is the children’s kingdom — towers to storm, mythical beasts, a secret grotto — built on the site of Henry VIII’s tiltyard where knights once jousted. With the Maze and the palace Family Trails it makes the gardens a full family day on their own; the FAQs cover pushchairs, food and timings.

The Kitchen Garden and the Wilderness

The Royal Kitchen Garden recreates William III’s working walled garden, growing what the palace tables once demanded. The Wilderness around the Maze turns into London’s best spring bulb display; in autumn the avenue limes go gold along the river.

Bushy Park, over the road

Across Hampton Court Road lies Bushy Park, the second-largest royal park in London, its deer herds descended from Tudor stock. The Hampton Court Palace bike tour loops through it for 8 flat miles — the right morning for anyone who wants the landscape without the interiors.

The gardens season by season

Spring belongs to the Wilderness, where the bulbs run under the trees around the Maze. Summer is the Privy Garden at full colour and the longest opening hours of the year, with the Magic Garden busy from mid-morning. Late August into September brings the Great Vine harvest, when the grapes go on sale at the glasshouse. Autumn turns the lime avenues gold along the Long Water; winter strips the parterres back to their bones, which is when Wren’s geometry reads most clearly from the palace steps.

How long the gardens take

Ninety minutes covers the Privy Garden, the Great Fountain Garden and the Great Vine at a walking pace. Add 30 minutes for the Maze and another hour if children are heading into the Magic Garden. A full circuit including the Kitchen Garden and the river frontage is a comfortable half day — which is why travellers who allow only three hours for everything tend to finish the palace and run out of daylight outside.

The ground is level and largely surfaced, so the gardens are the most accessible part of the estate. Benches are frequent, the Tiltyard Café sits centrally, and the Maze is the one section where paths narrow. Full access details are on the visitor information page.

Pair the gardens with the room-by-room palace guide, check seasonal hours on the visitor information page, and let Hampton Court Palace Tours match the visit to the right ticket.