The Courtyard garden is designed as a formal garden with a centre piece statue surrounded by coloured grasses. The scheme was to incorporate all the colours of the spectrum hence a yellow and blue border, a red and orange border and the soft pinks and mauves in the remaining border.

The three borders flower from June until the frosts. The rest of the garden, incorporating fourteen magnolias, many camellias and rhododendrons, and several other shrubs and bulbs, are spring flowering.

The pathways have only relatively recently been re-laid using granite paviours which once formed the platform of a local railway station.

The surrounding fir trees were all seedlings found in the garden and have made a more interesting backdrop than a conventionally planted leylandii hedge.