Glasshouses of the Chantry Walled Garden (ActivLives plant nursery), Chantry Park

Chantry Park, three kilometres west of Ipswich town centre, was the park of a gentleman's seat before it became public; the heritage register listed it at Grade II in 1988. A chantry was founded there in 1509 by the merchant Edmund Daundy, and the property then passed between several families down to Sir Fitzroy Kelly, who remodelled the house from 1852. In 1927 Sir Arthur Churchman bought the estate to present it to the town; the park opened to the public on 17 May 1928.

The walled kitchen garden, 70 m west of the house, has two enclosures. The farther one, about 80 m by 60, dates from the eighteenth century according to the register. The smaller one, already shown on the 1838 tithe map but with a smaller extent, was enlarged and improved: the register sees the work of 1908, the date on its monumental gateway, whereas the Suffolk inventory shows it already enlarged by 1886 and ties the 1908 gateway to works by Mrs Jump and the nurseryman Roger Notcutt. The register describes in 1998 stepped glasshouses of the early twentieth century along the north wall and, elsewhere, ranges of late-twentieth-century glasshouses. The Suffolk inventory, written in 2023, says the stepped houses against the north wall still stood in 2011 but have gone, and that a large late-twentieth-century glasshouse covers much of the interior.

After 1927 Ipswich Borough Council used the enclosures as a nursery; the main enclosure later became a centre for older people with learning difficulties, and is now run by ActivLives. In spring 2023 the charity reopened its refurbished nursery: neighbourhood funding bought second-hand growing staging from a closing garden centre, which volunteers assembled, and a plant sale marked the reopening on 30 May 2023.

The main walled garden is a trapezoid enclosure of 80 m by 60 with a cut-off south-east corner; the Suffolk inventory dates it to the eighteenth century. A Gothic-arched gateway opens in the south wall toward the park, and a matching one, bricked up, in the west wall. The smaller second enclosure extends to the east and has the monumental entrance dated 1908.

The present glasshouses belong to a different age from the walls. The register and the Suffolk inventory date them to the late twentieth century, and the latter speaks of one large glasshouse covering much of the interior; the OpenStreetMap outline of the building tagged as a greenhouse in the walled garden, about 1,265 m², gives an order of magnitude. An official photograph from the charity, posted in 2023, shows a wall of large glass panels on a low plinth of grey blocks capped with a course of brick, with timber-framed opening lights, above timber raised beds full of flowers.

These are production glasshouses: the charity propagates and grows on the plants it sells at its nursery. It presents the garden as a place of flower borders of heritage varieties, with an accessible courtyard garden whose plants are chosen for dry conditions, and raised beds for wheelchair users. The spring plant fair of 2026 announced perennials, along with bird boxes and garden trugs made in one of the charity's woodworking workshops. For the smaller enclosure the heritage register recalls box-edged beds, a pear walk and a fan-trained pear on the wall of an early to mid nineteenth-century gardener's cottage; these belong to the historic garden rather than to the glasshouses.

The walled garden is part of a charity project rather than an ornamental garden: it is open at ActivLives' hours, and the nursery sells plants on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and on Saturdays in May and June. Volunteers welcome visitors, and the charity held a plant fair on 7 April 2026, with tea and cake served at the nursery cottage. The way in is from the Hadleigh Road entrance, along the path that runs past the stable block.

The park itself, open at all times according to the council, offers more to see: the Chantry mansion in Italianate style, the parterre designed after Nesfield, the lime avenue planted in 1807, the lake of Beech Water and the large wildlife meadow. Spring is the period of the Saturday sales (May and June) and of the 2026 plant fair.