How gardens embraced European style and kangaroos

The garden at Wotton House were inspired by Italian and French styles

An estate that was once home to kangaroos is believed to have popularised Italian-style gardens in England.

The garden at Wotton House in Surrey was transformed between 1643 and 1652 under the direction of its resident, diarist and landscape designer John Evelyn.

A walled enclosure was later added in the mid-19th Century to house kangaroos, according to the hotel's current general manager Edward Adshead.

"When these gardens were completed, they would have been like nothing anybody had ever seen," he said.

According to the hotel, Mr Evelyn tasked his brother and cousin – both named George – with renovating the Tudor-style garden after inheriting the house.

The landscape had a "particularly large hillside and woodlands", Mr Adshead said, but it now featured flat lawns and an entertaining space.

The Evelyn family wanted an "incredible space for entertaining that was light and bright, had some symmetry, and obviously could bring in the architecture of Europe", Mr Adshead said.

Dorking Museum chair Kathy Atherton told Secret Surrey that Mr Evelyn had "brought back ideas from Italy, from France, and tried them out" at Wotton House.

"It's down to them that we have a lot of the garden trends that we have today," she added.

Mr Adshead said that the Tudor period was "very, very different in its tastes and architecture".

Wotton House gardens "would have been an incredible space, almost quite magical, other-worldly," he added.

The gardens were later added to in the mid-19th Century to create the kangaroo pen, in what is now a "secret" walled garden, Mr Adshead said.

He added that rumours of kangaroos had become "a bit of an urban legend, or maybe myth", but said "we did have kangaroos here" in mid-19th Century.