Get the look Colour-themed perennials and grasses add style in the rose garden at Wynyard Hall
Colour-themed perennials and grasses give the rose garden at Wynyard Hall a modern, romantic look. Head Gardener Mark Birtle explains their approach
Traditional rose gardens tend to be one-hit wonders, but at Wynyard Hall in County Durham the idea of a rose garden has been brought bang up to date with a design that mixes these quintessential English flowers with ornamental grasses and herbaceous perennials for a long season of interest. We persuaded Head Gardener Mark Birtle to share his secrets…
When was the garden created? We started on the redesign of our two-acre walled garden in January 2015 and the garden was ready for opening by August that year. It was quite an intense time. When I first came to Wynyard 25 years ago the area was completely neglected, all overgrown and with areas set aside for a tree plantation. Then it became a large
lawned area with three metre-wide mixed borders around the outside so it could be used as an events venue.
How did the design come about? Wynyard Hall is a country house hotel and the idea was to create a garden open to the public within its grounds. Owner Sir John Hall has loved roses since he was a lad. His dad used to grow them and it was always Sir John’s ambition to create a substantial rose garden. With 3,500 roses here, I think he’s achieved it!
What are the key elements? There’s quite a slope to the area, so designer Alistair Baldwin created a series of raised beds, known as ‘plats’, to tackle the change in levels. Among them are water features inspired by Moorish gardens. Each plat contains a mix of roses of different heights, with some at ground level, some at knee height and others at nose level.
A mix of colour palettes sweep across the garden, from yellows and oranges through to reds and purples, created using appropriate roses and perennials.
The trellis panels and pillars are made from Douglas fir, which has weathered to a lovely silvery hue. These dramatic pillars add height, giving a bit of colour up in the sky, and break up the mounding shapes of the roses. Planted with climbing roses and clematis, these further extend the season.
What are the key plants? There’s a mix of moss and shrub roses such as ‘Princess Alexandra of Kent’ to species briar types including Rosa rugosa. We’ve planted a lot of nepeta, Salvia nemorosa ‘Ostfriesland’ and calamagrostis, pennisetums and Stipa tenuissima grasses. Geranium ‘Dragon Heart’ is a lovely groundcover plant, while Thalictrum aquilegiifolium ‘Thundercloud’, which grows to 1.5-1.8m (5-6ft) and towers over the roses, provides a lovely light frothiness.
How does the garden progress through the seasons? The perpetual (repeatflowering) David Austin roses have quite a long flowering season. But because we’re open all year, we need plenty of early colour too. Each of the 14 raised beds has a specimen Magnolia stellata, and we’ve added species tulips and a mix of taller, reliable cultivars such as ‘Red Riding Hood’, planted in large clumps rather than
These dramatic pillars add height, giving a bit of colour up in the sky
dotted about, so they look more dramatic and provide support for each other.
After midsummer, once the roses have peaked, our perennials and grasses – all 12,500 of them – take us through to the second flush of roses and on into autumn. Towards the end of the season we have rose hips, golden grasses and the autumn colours of perennials as they die back.
How do you maintain the garden? We choose plants that don’t need staking and tying in, so all the herbaceous plants are self-supporting. Although salvia ‘Ostfriesland’ tends to flop, it softens the path edges and new growth appears from the centre. Many perennials are trimmed back after the first flush of flowers and then regenerate. Even if they don’t flower again, they look much better because they haven’t been left to get straggly.
We grow rose cultivars that are more resistant to blackspot such as my favourite ‘Olivia Rose Austin’ and ‘Vanessa Bell’.
When we deadhead the roses we remove the whole cluster and 10-12cm (4-5in) of stem. It works as a form of pruning too, reducing the roses’ height so they bloom at eye level rather than up in the sky. ✿