IT will always be a nice day for a white wedding – thanks to a major garden makeover at Somerleyton Hall.

The transformation of its old sunken garden through the planting of hundreds of white, scented plants, was the vision of Lord Somerleyton, Hugh Crossley, who wanted to create an idyllic wedding venue at the historic estate.

The project, which will be seen to its best effect when the plants come into blossom in time for summer weddings, has been led by two Norfolk garden designers, George Carter and Verity Hanson-Smith, and is the first step of a significant revamp of the gardens which attract 25,000 visitors a year.

Ms Hanson-Smith has designed decorative iron seating to be added later in the year. She said: “It is quite a busy area between the orangerie and winter gardens and my aim was to turn it into a calm and scented place.”

Mr Crossley, who became the fourth Lord Somerleyton after the death of his father earlier this year, revealed that the formal garden on the west front of the hall would undergo a makeover next year and revamping the walled garden would be the final major stage of the project.

One aim is to reveal to the public forgotten aspects of the garden which would have existed during its two principal incarnations, in the 17th and 19th Centuries.

He said: “When I moved here after my father retired in 2004, I started researching the history of the estate and especially the original house and gardens developed by wealthy owner John Wentworth at the start of the 17th Century.

“The 17th-Century evolution is very much a lost story and yet the garden of that time would have been quite elaborate, much larger than it is today, and one of the grandest in East Anglia.” Lord Somerleyton’s vision is to “peel back the layers” to reveal how the garden would have looked in the 17th Century and in the 19th Century when it was redesigned by William Nesfield, one of the foremost garden designers of his day.

To help achieve this, a fountain is to be installed on the west front – which was part of Nesfield’s French-influenced design – and artists’ impressions on colourful panels will highlight the contrasts.

Lord Somerleyton’s mission to create “one of the top national gardens to visit” led him into his collaboration with Mr Carter who is a garden historian as well as a designer. After painstaking research at Lowestoft Record Office, he was able to paint watercolour impressions of the 17th-Century garden. Mr Carter said: “One of my most exciting finds is that the garden of that period included an early grotto at the far end, beyond what was known as ‘the image park’, probably a sort of artificial wilderness with statues.

“There is nothing of the grotto or its associated pools left but it shows that the garden was in the forefront of fashion.” To complement the gardens, Lord Somerleyton has invested over the winter in airy new tearooms near the hall’s entrance.