The Secret Garden Play Area & Pets Corner is home to the many friendly Powderham pets and our adventure play area. A donkey, pony, pigs, goats, guinea pigs, chickens, sheep, and stick-insects, to name but a few, live here in a blissfully happy environment and enjoy the company of visitors, children and adults alike.

Take one of our Goats for a stroll through the grounds! 

Booking in advance is essential to avoid disappointment.  

Children must be over 12 years to go on one of the animal walks and must be accompanied by an adult.

Records from 1728 and 1740 refer to a wide range of fruit and vegetables, including Indian jasmine, myrtles, and oranges. Accounts for the Powderham kitchen garden from 1810-1812 note at least 13 different apple trees, 10 varieties of pear, 6 kinds of plum, and 5 kinds of cherry as well as damsons, greengages, peaches, apricots, nectarines, mulberries and pineapples. Interestingly the accounts show sales to the public, indicating a very productive garden.

The buildings in the Kitchen Garden were allowed to become dilapidated and by 1845 Charles Fowler had replaced the old buildings with a range of hot houses and sheds.

At some point between 1839 and 1888 the Kitchen Garden was relocated to its present site. Plans in the Devon record office show a conservatory and peach houses in about 1860, and this may have been the date of the construction of the new Kitchen Garden.