which historic site should win top award?

Garden fever is sweeping Britain as historic houses compete for a public vote on their horticultural prowess, while Sir David Attenborough returns to television to explore the nation’s smaller green spaces.

On Wednesday Historic Houses announced its six shortlisted contenders for its 2026 garden of the year award for which a public vote will determine who will be the next to gain in visitor numbers from the boom in “garden tourism”.

Tourism figures for the past few years have consistently shown a growth in numbers for Britain’s outdoor attractions as sites such as RHS Wisley and Windsor Great Park continue to perform better than many of the country’s greatest museums.

Monteviot House garden, with purple allium flowers in the foreground and white-barked trees in the background.

The most visited attraction in Britain last year was the Natural History Museum. Its table-topping feat has been attributed to the creation of its five-acre outdoor site in the heart of London complete with “bustling urban wildlife” space.

Historic Houses, which represents hundreds of historic homes and castles, said its shortlisted gardens were “reflective of the horticultural excellence” across its member properties.

The sites are Burghley House in Lincolnshire, Coughton Court in Warwickshire, Kelmarsh Hall in Northamptonshire, Monteviot House in the Borders, Plas Cadnant in Anglesey and Sledmere House in East Yorkshire.

Burghley Gardens Sculpture Garden Hidden Valley, a lush garden with diverse plants, a winding path, and the sun shining through trees in the background. Kelmarsh Hall, one of the shortlisted gardens for the 2026 Historic Houses Garden of the Year Award, features a formal sunken garden with gravel paths, manicured hedges, and various flowering plants and trees under soft, golden light.

Kelmarsh Hall

SARAH VIVIENNE PHOTOGRAPHY

None of the sites have previously won the award, which has been running for more than 40 years and last year was claimed by Arundel Castle, West Sussex.

Arundel Castle's grounds feature a hillside garden of red tulips and white daffodils, with a stone castle structure in the background.

Arundel Castle

CLIVE NICHOLS COURTESY OF MARTIN DUNCAN

Ben Cowell, the director-general of Historic Houses, said it was an “exceptional shortlist”, adding that he was looking forward “to seeing which emerges with the most votes by the end of a busy summer of garden tourism”.

Plas Cadnant, Anglesey, featuring a herbaceous border and a cottage, a shortlisted garden for the 2026 Garden of the Year Award. The Sledmere House garden features gravel paths, trimmed hedges, and various plants, with a brick building visible in the background.

Sledmere House

CHRISTOPHER JOHN DOYLE

Britain’s garden obsession — there are about 25 million in the country — is set to continue with the launch on Sunday of Attenborough’s latest series.

Secret Garden is set to feature five British backyards as the BBC’s cameras capture pine martens in the western Highlands, dormice in south Wales, swallows in the Lake District, otters in Oxfordshire and blue tits in Bristol.

It has been presented as Attenborough’s return to the “home turf” of domestic gardens where the broadcaster’s love of natural history began almost a century ago.

Illustration of Sir David Attenborough surrounded by a squirrel, a kestrel, a robin, a badger, and a hedgehog in a garden.

Sir David Attenborough

NATHAN SMALL/BBC

It is expected to highlight the diversity of Britain’s gardens, which cover a greater area than all of the country’s national nature reserves combined.

Ursula Cholmeley, the chairwoman of Historic Houses’ gardens and parklands committee, said that this year there would be a separate judges’ choice award, which “embodies excellence on a smaller scale” and represented a lifetime’s work.

Cholmeley added: “Both awards acknowledge the dedication that owners and gardening teams put into making historic gardens some of the best in the world.”