And the rest is history

The Surrey Hills is very much Lutyens and Jekyll territory, notably at their first-ever collaboration at the garden designer's home, Munstead Wood, and nearby Munstead Place

- Penny Churchill

BUILT by a young Edwin Lutyens for garden designer Gertrude Jekyll in 1896-97, Munstead Wood at Busbridge, near Godalming in the Surrey Hills AONB, was the first of more than 100 major collaborations between Lutyens and Jekyll that have graced the pages of COUNTRY LIFE since the magazine's founder, Edward Hudson, visited in 1899.

For sale for the first time in more than 50 years at a guide price of $5.25 million through Knight Frank, Grade I-listed Munstead Wood, with its trademark long roofs, dormers, tall ornamental chimneys, and 'Surrey-style' Arts and-Crafts interior, is widely regarded as one of Lutyens's most important country houses. Its just over 11 acres of gardens, originally laid out by Jekyll and restored in the 1990s, are independently listed Grade I in the National Register of Historic Parks and Gardens. The sale is being handled by Tim Harriss of Knight Frank's Guildford office (01483 617910) and Julia Meadowcroft of the firm's country department (020-7861 5390).

Historically, the site occupied by Munstead Wood was part of the former open common of Munstead Heath, a typical south Surrey landscape described by Jekyll as 'this country with its great tracts of wood and heathland, beautiful wild ground and soil of bright yellow sand and rock'. In 1878, she moved with her mother to their newly built Munstead House at Busbridge and, four years later, in 1882, acquired the roughly 15 acres of Munstead Wood that lay across the road.

The transformation from pine woods and rough heathland to famous woodland garden took place over many years, during which Jekyll allowed felled woodland to grow, as well as thinning the young trees create areas of different varieties, each with its own under-plantings of flowers and shrubs. The resulting woodland garden was viewed via a series of long walks. Later, the woods would merge gradually into lawns near the house, with seasonal gardens flowering in succession through the year.