Fodor's Expert Review Great Dixter House and Gardens

Combining a large timber-frame hall with a cottage garden on a grand scale, this place will get your green thumbs twitching. The house dates to 1464 (you can tour a few rooms) and was restored in 1910 by architect Edwin Lutyens, who also designed the garden. From these beginnings, the horticulturist and writer Christopher Lloyd (1921–2006), whose home this was, developed a series of creative, colorful "garden rooms" and a dazzling herbaceous Long Border. The house is 8½ miles northwest of Rye.