Mount St John

The house stands on the edge of the Hambleton Hills, with a seemingly endless view across the Vale of York. Tom Stuart-Smith was given the task of creating a garden on the sloping ground below the house. Terraces level the ground into borders filled with perennials, anchored in place by large box spheres and beech clipped into domes. Billowing masses of Salvia, Knautia, Eryngium, Verbascum, fennel and Campanula swirl round these fixed points, leading the eye back over the garden. 

Littlethorpe Manor

The 11 acre garden has been re-landscaped since 1998. Behind the house is a sunken white garden, with box hedges enclosing Santolina, Pyrus salicifolia and the rose ‘Katharina Zeimet’, around a central armillary sphere. A pergola leads through a blue and yellow border and, in front of the house, the previously sloping lawns have been levelled, Irish yews frame an ornamental pool and steps lead down to a lime avenue, lake and classical temple.