Garden to visit
Helmsley Walled Garden celebrates 25 years
This year marks the 25th anniversary of the renaissance of Helmsley Walled Garden. This five-acre space was first built in 1759 to supply fruit, vegetables and flowers to nearby Duncombe House, but is now home to a remarkable collection of plants. Enclosed by high red brick walls, the garden lies on the edge of a market town in
the North York Moors. It fell into decline after the First World War and was used as a market garden until 1982, before nature reclaimed the space. It wasn’t until 1994 that pioneering local woman Alison Ticehurst saw its potential as a garden for horticultural therapy and set about creating the relaxed plant-filled paradise that it has become today.
With a group of friends and helpers Alison transformed the garden, which was overrun by chest-high weeds and trees pushing through the greenhouse roof. Sadly Alison died suddenly in 1999, but her legacy remains, and Helmsley’s stunning garden has become a haven for people who are disabled, long-term unemployed, socially isolated or suffering from depression. In midsummer, a crescendo of colour certainly helps to raise the spirits. Deep herbaceous borders erupt in a kaleidoscope of vibrant hues against a backdrop of copper beech hedging. The large blocks of eye-popping reds, oranges and yellows from plants such as helenium ‘Moerheim Beauty’, Anthemis tinctoria ‘EC Buxton’, potentilla ‘Gibson’s Scarlet’ and towering Verbascum olympicum mingle with hot pink monardas and purple liatris. From these bountiful borders, which run down the centre of the garden, paths lead to a kitchen garden that supplies the on-site café with delicious fresh produce. There’s also an allotment where local people can rent raised beds to grow their own fruit, veg and flowers. These are enclosed by a collection of stepover and cordon-trained apples, allowing multiple cultivars to be grown in a relatively small area. Malus ‘Acklam Russet’, first recorded in 1768, is an old Yorkshire apple, while ‘Catshead’ is one of the oldest cultivars in England, with distinctive elongated fruit. Fan-trained damsons, cherries and currants cover the wall at the far end of the garden, dripping with luscious summer fruit. There’s an orchard too, underplanted with a romantic wildflower meadow of cornfield annuals – corncockle (agrostemma), corn marigold (glebionis) and cornflower (centaurea). The clematis garden contains more than 100 different cultivars, demonstrating the diversity of this beloved climber, with a collection of viburnums providing support for their scrambling ascent. Sheltered by laurel hedging, the White Garden is a peaceful space full of whiteflowered perennials and flowering shrubs such as spiraea and Choisya dewitteana ‘Aztec Pearl’ set against a cooling backdrop of lush green foliage. Collections of annuals and tender plants, such as pelargoniums and brugmansia, are grown in the sympathetically restored
UPLIFTING DISPLAYS (clockwise from above left) A restful spot to sit among red, pink and white mallows; sheltered by red-brick walls, the double herbaceous borders erupt in high summer; purple salvia in the clematis garden; orange erysimum in the kitchen garden, which also supplies the café
glasshouses. The Vine House contains 34 heritage grape cultivars such as ‘Wrotham Pinot’ and ‘Black Hamburg’. Back in the day, grapes would have been an exotic treat served at lavish dinner parties at Duncombe House; today you can enjoy a spot of lunch beneath them as they ripen. Not only has Helmsley become a haven of horticulture, but also it’s a place that uses plants to transform lives.