Compton Acres
  Description
Compton Acres is one of the most popular gardens on the south coast; its 10 acres of gardens were built in 1929 and have seven distinct garden areas including the Italian Garden and the Japanese Garden.

There is also a Model Railway.
 
  Open
All year (closed on Christmas Day and Boxing Day)
Daily, 10am - 6pm (10am - 4pm in the winter)
 
  Prices
Free entry for under 5s
 
  Contact
164 Canford Cliffs Road, Poole, Dorset, BH13 7ES
Tel:01202 700778
Website
Streetmap
 
  More pictures
 
  Directions
Signposted from the A338 and A35 with the the brown tourist signs. Wilts and Dorset bus number 50 from Bournemouth and 52 from Poole.
Streetmap
 
  Parking
Parking on site
 
  Refreshments
Compton Acres Cafe Tearooms and Harbour View Cafe For more details call 01202 700778 or email cafe@comptonacres.co.uk
 
  Accessibility
The gardens are accessible for wheelchair users and when you arrive if you inform the ticket desk that you do in fact have a wheelchair they will give the map for wheelchair users.
Wheelchairs hire (electric)
Toilets for wheelchair users
Dogs
 
  Poems in garden

And in the warm hedge grew lush eglantine,
Green cowbind and the moonlight-coloured may,
And cherry-blossoms, and white cups, whose wine
Was the bright dew, yet drained not by the day;
And wild roses, and ivy serpentine

Full version - The Question - a poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley

I dreamed that, as I wandered by the way,
Bare Winter suddenly was changed to Spring,
And gentle odours led my steps astray,
Mixed with a sound of waters murmuring
Along a shelving bank of turf, which lay
Under a copse, and hardly dared to fling
Its green arms round the bosom of the stream,
But kissed it and then fled, as thou mightest in dream.

There grew pied wind-flowers and violets,
Daisies, those pearled Arcturi of the earth,
The constellated flower that never sets;
Faint oxlips; tender bluebells, at whose birth
The sod scarce heaved; and that tall flower that wets
Like a child, half in tenderness and mirth
Its mother's face with Heaven's collected tears,
When the low wind, its playmate's voice, it hears.

And in the warm hedge grew lush eglantine,
Green cowbind and the moonlight-coloured may,
And cherry-blossoms, and white cups, whose wine
Was the bright dew, yet drained not by the day;
And wild roses, and ivy serpentine,
With its dark buds and leaves, wandering astray;
And flowers azure, black, and streaked with gold,
Fairer than any wakened eyes behold.

And nearer to the river's trembling edge
There grew broad flag-flowers, purple pranked with white,
And starry river buds among the sedge,
And floating water-lilies, broad and bright,
Which lit the oak that overhung the hedge
With moonlight beams of their own watery light;
And bulrushes, and reeds of such deep green
As soothed the dazzled eye with sober sheen.

Methought that of these visionary flowers
I made a nosegay, bound in such a way
That the same hues, which in their natural bowers
Were mingled or opposed, the like array
Kept these imprisoned children of the Hours
Within my hand, and then, elate and gay,
I hastened to the spot whence I had come,
That I might there present it! Oh! to whom?

 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 

 
 
 
Compton Acres
 
Compton Acres