Munstead Wood

Munstead Wood is a Grade I listed house and garden in Munstead Heath, Busbridge on the boundary of the town of Godalming in Surrey, England, 1 mile (1.6 km) south-east of the town centre. The garden was created first, by garden designer Gertrude Jekyll, and became widely known through her books and prolific articles in magazines such as Country Life. The Arts and Crafts style house, in which Jekyll lived from 1897 to 1932, was designed by architect Edwin Lutyens to complement the garden.

Munstead Wood was the first in a series of influential collaborations between Lutyens and Jekyll in house and garden design. The number of these collaborations has been put at around 120; other well known ones include Deanery Garden in Berkshire and Hestercombe House in Somerset.

The entire original area of Jekyll's property is grade I listed in the National Register of Historic Parks and Gardens. Since Jekyll's time, it has been divided into six plots with different owners.

The main house, which retains the name of Munstead Wood and whose plot contains most of the original gardens, is a grade I listed building. The properties in the other plots, which are to the north and west of the main house, also include listed buildings designed by Lutyens, in the lesser two categories; these were mostly Jekyll's outbuildings.

Jekyll purchased Munstead Wood in 1882 or 1883, just across Munstead Heath Road from Munstead House, where she had been living with her mother since 1878. A part of Munstead Heath, Munstead Wood was a triangular area 15 acres (6.1 ha) in total, sloping upwards from its north-west corner, which was a sandy field, to 9 acres (3.6 ha) of former Scots pine woodland, on heath soil.

Jekyll transformed Munstead Wood gradually over many years. She allowed the felled woodland to grow back, but thinned the young trees, creating areas of different varieties and different combinations of varieties, and gave each area its own underplantings of flowers and shrubs. The resulting woodland garden was viewed via a series of long woodland walks. Nearer the house the woods merged gradually into lawns. Seasonal gardens flowered in succession through the year: the "spring garden", the "hidden garden", the "June garden", and the main herbaceous border, 200 feet (61 m) long, which flowered from July until October. Each garden displayed carefully arranged shades of colour.

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