Surprises in a hidden garden
A journey of discovery awaits visitors to York Gate, where an abundance of plants and intricate features are a feast for the eyes
IN A LEAFY part of West Yorkshire on the edge of farmland, north of Leeds, is a hidden gem, regarded by many as one of Britain’s finest 20th century gardens. Along a country lane, past an ancient Norman church, is the entrance to York Gate, which, on an early spring day as hints of warmth slowly return, is beginning to burst back into life. When Frederick and Sybil Spencer and their teenage son, Robin first came to York Gate in Adel in 1951, it was just a stone-built Victorian house surrounded by farm fields. The family kept horses and livestock, and Frederick and Sybil wanted to build a garden. York Gate offered the perfect setting, with everything they needed to fulfil their dreams. Although none of the family had any horticultural training, Frederick was a surveyor and used his skills of accuracy, attention to detail and understanding sight lines to turn a bare field into a garden. He was inspired by the ideas of the Arts and Crafts movement, which celebrated the use of local materials and craftsmanship. Frederick divided York Gate into garden ‘rooms’, a classic design feature of the style, separated from each other by clipped yew and beech hedges. The garden as a whole also became characterised by the use of intricately detailed hard landscaping, vistas, points of interest and strong shapes. The garden was a work in progress for more than 30 years. When Frederick died in 1963, Robin continued its development, then he passed away suddenly in 1982, leaving Sybil, a passionate plantswoman, to tend the gardens. In 1994, following Sybil’s death, they were given to the horticultural charity Perennial, as she had requested. York Gate is now maintained by a team of four: the head gardener, Ben Preston, the senior gardener, Jack Ogg, and two trainees, along with 20 volunteers.
Attention to detail
The main garden is one acre in size, wrapping around three sides of the house, and has a south-westerly aspect which bathes the garden in sunshine. The great collection of trees, which surround the garden, provide shelter and give it a feeling of enclosure. Even on a spring day, without a canopy of leaves, the space feels free of external distractions. York Gate packs a lot into its acre. Even though it is divided into 14 different ‘rooms’, the whole garden is cleverly unified by the repeated use throughout of water, in the form of ponds, streams and a canal, and circle motifs, such as millstones set into paths, the round window in the shed and the circular pavement maze at the entrance. “In the middle of summer, when everything’s in bloom, it can be quite hard to appreciate the structure and backbone of the garden, but spring is a great time to see the layout, the hedges, all the detailing in the paths and the fabulous vistas cutting through the garden,” says Ben. Paths link each of the smaller gardens, but rather than just creating simple gravel or grass paths, the hard landscaping at York Gate has been designed as a feature in itself. “We have a lovely pavement maze just as you come into the garden, which is made with granite setts and filled with pea gravel that’s a mix of brown and grey tones on the inside. Then, on the outside, it’s surrounded by the larger stone of 20mm grey gravel. This slight difference makes the design stand out,” explains Ben. “We also use the small gravel, a Breedon gravel or pea gravel, on a lot of the paths. It looks very ornamental, and although it moves around a bit because it’s smaller than other gravel, it’s often kept in place using granite setts in varied designs as path edging.” It is not only hard materials that have been used to create
structure and sculptural forms. Evergreen plants, such as yew, box and holly, tightly clipped in the form of hedges or topiary in spheres, spiral shapes and cones, create points of focus. They draw the eye or create a visual full-stop at the end of a path. They also provide year-round structure: a solid backdrop which allows the seasonal displays of bulbs, annuals and perennials to shine. Heading through the old orchard to the pinetum is a collection of plants that had their heyday in the 1960s and ’70s, when the Spencers were creating their garden. Here, the extraordinary espaliered blue cedar, pruned to form long limbs that run the length of the raised canal water feature, shows that this group of plants can be used in interesting ways. From here, a grey Yorkstone path winds through the dell, a wilder woodland area which has a cool, shady feel, thanks to a canopy of deciduous trees including birches, Acer aconitifolium and tulip trees. The stream which runs through the dell is part of a natural watercourse that is diverted through an old culvert, which enters the garden near the main entrance and makes its way to Adel Beck. Vibrant green unfurling fronds of shuttlecock
“Here, in alleys cool and green, Far ahead the thrush is seen; Here along the southern wall Keeps the bee his festival” Henry Austin Dobson, ‘A Garden Song’
ferns and moisture lovers, such as skunk cabbage and marsh marigold, thrive here. This is also where some of the more unusual spring plants can be found, such as dog’s tooth violet, or erythronium; Anemonella thalictroides ‘Green Hurricane’, a small woodland plant with a height of 5in (12cm), which has interesting green flowers; Glaucidium palmatum, the Japanese wood poppy, which grows up to 2ft (60cm) tall, and Hacquetia epipactis, which has clusters of tiny yellow flowers surrounded by a collar of green bracts and grows to 6in (15cm) high. The path curves back round to the nut walk, a tunnel of hazel trees that sparkles in spring, with fresh, vibrant green leaves and the dramatic orange-red flowers of the species tulip ‘Fusilier’. Turning past the hexagonal folly, along a brown gravel path next to the raised canal water feature, is the canal garden, with its distinctive yew ‘sails’, formed by a triangular-pruned hedge. The carpet path shows how a simple walkway can become a garden feature: granite setts have been laid in a criss-cross formation, and along either side of the path, the gaps have been infilled with pea gravel. Running along both edges are rows of low-growing black mondo grass, the short tufts of foliage creating a loose, soft edging to the path. “I didn’t really like Ophiopogon planiscapus ‘Nigrescens’ before I came to York Gate, but here it’s been really closely planted to create a hedging effect,
and it looks brilliant,” says Ben. In spring, the grass frames deep borders filled with crown imperial fritillaries, daffodils and pulmonarias, these explosions of bright oranges, yellows and blues providing a striking contrast. Along a path from here is a greenhouse packed with fleshy-leaved succulents. “We’ve got quite a collection of aeoniums, echeverias and unusual aloes,” says Ben. “Sybil was very passionate about these plants, and it’s something we’ve wanted to keep going. We’ve actually started moving them outdoors in summer, planting them under the trachycarpus where it’s dry and in full sun, and little else will grow.”
Continuing a legacy
It is testament to the Spencers’ vision that the overall design and structure of the garden has not changed since Perennial took over. The garden was in a very good state, but gardens evolve as plants outgrow their space and some reach the end of their natural lives, so they cannot be preserved in the same way as a museum collection. Some trees have had to be removed, and others have had branches pruned out to let in more light. “We have a garden committee that makes major decisions on aspects that could affect the history and aesthetics of the garden,” says Ben. “The aim is to try to keep the spirit of York Gate as the Spencers would have wanted it. We have a brilliant heritage and archive volunteer team that has been funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund. They have been collecting and collating all the old drawings, plans, photos and plant records of the garden, and these will soon be available on a digital archive.” The hedges, the way the topiary is clipped and the ornaments are all intrinsic to the garden, but ideas about the herbaceous plants, shrubs and
“A garden is a lovesome thing, God wot! Rose plot, Fringed pool, Ferned grot-- The veriest school Of peace” Thomas Edward Brown, ‘My Garden’
bulbs are more fluid, he explains. “As long as they fit with the planting scheme, we can play with that side of things to bring the garden into the 21st century. The Spencers always used the most up-to-date plants. They were always on the lookout for new cultivars and new species, so it’s something we’ll continue to do. Jack Ogg, our senior gardener, is particularly interested in arisaema and hardy orchids, so he’s always sneaking new species of those into the garden.” One of Ben’s first projects when he arrived in August 2017 was to tackle a problem with the pond in the old orchard. “Frederick built Sybil the pond for their silver wedding anniversary, with the water running into it from an old culvert. The problem was that if you didn’t have any rain for a few weeks, the pond dried up and it looked awful,” he says. This had been an issue for decades, but there hadn’t been the funding to sort it out. “We’ve created a closed system by diverting the natural watercourse in a pipe under the pond, then created a new sump at the base of the stream that contains a pump to recirculate the water. We also built two stone chimneys in the main body of the pond which act as a pressure value when the ground water level changes. This ensures no holes are blown in the fibre-cement render that lines it. It is quite a simple system, and it means that the pond is permanently full. It’s amazing to see all the wildlife that uses the pond now.”
New additions
Sybil’s garden, which was designed in 2003 by Alastair Baldwin to rejuvenate an area that had been used for vegetable growing, is a new addition to the main garden. To ensure the design was in keeping, the designer used the circle motif employed elsewhere in the garden, in the form of circular paths surrounding a circular lawn and water feature, with a sweeping curve of box hedging. The most open part of York Gate is at the end of the white garden, filled with white flowers during the summer
months, where gates open onto a field. In 2017, plans started on turning the space into a meadow. “It was a paddock where the Spencers kept horses, but it was probably a wildflower meadow at some point in the past, so we’re returning it to this,” explains Ben. “By opening up this area, it will double the size of the garden.” It is new projects like this, along with continuing the legacy of the Spencers, that make Ben love working at York Gate so much. “It’s such an intimate garden, and there’s so much variety in such a small space. We have everything from pond-side and woodland planting to herbaceous borders, topiary and a kitchen garden. There’s such a wide range of different garden ideas. I think it’s one of the best gardens in the country.”