The Newt has been on my bucket list for quite a while, longer in fact than it has been called The Newt.

Now an hotel and spa, it has been the home of garden designer Penelope Hobhouse and plant colourists Nori and Sandra Pope who all knew it as Hadspen House. The current owners, Koos Bekker and his wife Karen Roos bought the house, its gardens and the rest of the estate in 2013.

The house and garden have been redesigned by Patrice Taravella on a seemingly money-no-object basis. There is a huge focus on growing apples with the estate making its own fine cider. Produce from the farm and garden feature substantially on the menus.

The elliptical walled garden is famous and now features many heritage apples grown as espaliers and cordons within an apple-themed maze. The rest of the garden tells the history of gardening including geometric Islamic garden designs with rills, Victorian formal bedding displays, a Baroque garden to more modern grass borders, wild flower meadows and some flower gardens with colour themes as a nod to the previous endeavours of the Popes.

I’ve a feeling there’s not much of the garden Penelope Hobhouse and the Popes would have known, with the exception of the Walled Garden. However, you wouldn’t know it’s a relatively new garden. No expense has been spared in using the finest quality materials from oak sleepers, wrought iron railings (miles of it), Blue Lias limestone steps (from Hadspen quarry?), an extremely large, mature cloud pruned yew hedge and mature espalier and fan-trained fruit trees.

A couple of examples of this are the gourd tunnel, designed just to show the beauty of different varieties of gourds and pumpkins (some are netted for safety), and my favourite feature, the aerial walkway through ash and beech trees to a rather nice cafe.

And yes, even though we’d had an amazing lunch, cake was eaten - rosewater and pistachio if you’re wondering (we did at least share).

The colour gardens are some of the newer features here, with separate rooms of red, white, blue and green plants.

It was a chilly grey day in late September when we visited but the grass borders were looking amazing.

And the Cottage Garden was still looking good. The whole of this garden is irrigated so there was no evidence of any drought damage. And neither were there any weeds, amazing.

The Newt is just a few minutes from the A303 and a couple of miles from the destination town of Bruton. It would be quite hard to fit in the Hauser & Wirth garden at Bruton if you’re just visiting for the day (we didn’t manage to see all of the garden at The Newt) and having lunch as well.

A casual visit to the Newt is difficult unless you have a very good friend who is a member and/or are staying overnight at the hotel. I’m told the hotel and spa are rather fabulous and worth every penny.

There are restuarants, cafes, a farm shop, home wares shop, cider press, a museum, a newly recreated Roman Villa, more than enough to keep you entertained for quite a while.

A big thanks to Nicola for a fabulous day out, lunch and driving all the way there and back.