A Matrix Garden Amidst a Desert of Grass

This was a really special garden for me and I thoroughly enjoyed designing and building it. I believe, that the Yorkshire Dales and the Howgills are without question the most beautiful places in England. This old property set in the rugged countryside around the North Yorkshire town of Hawes, filled with towering hills, limestone paving and small angular streams coursing through the Dales, close to where Emily Brontë was born and raised, its little wonder that a stone's throw away from the property was the set for the latest cinematic adaptation of Wuthering Heights. The clients had only recently lovingly renovated this long derelict and ruined farmhouse and creamery into a family home with outhouses to be rented out and were turning their eyes to the garden, a former farm yard and midden. With an ode both to the house's exterior and the surrounding areas we created raised beds and lawn using local stone atop of which we planted a stunning naturalistic matrix garden. Reused Yorkstone from the old farmhouse was used to create patios and steps.

I was very keen to create a loose naturalistic garden, that wrapped itself around the property, enveloping it in a blanket of colour and interest throughout as much of the year as possible. The plants were chosen with great care to thrive no matter what the Dales' weather threw at it. They had to be hardy enough to endure -15 winters, and drought tolerant enough to endure the summer droughts in the friable very free draining sandy-loamy soil. I also wanted them to be slightly contemporary in feel, evoking the interior of the property, mixing heritage with modern design. Likewise in the garden, the contemporary edge of the planting mixed beautifully with our heritage stone walling.

Gravel paths formed the corridors between each of the patios, main property and out-houses. The path between the main house and the creamery, evoking the ha-ha of the past, in this modern guise it forms a wonder path between the two where the perennials are at face level on both sides creating a really unique experience. Indeed all the beds of the rear garden were raised, designed specifically to create this exact effect of being immersed by colour, scent and wildlife without interrupting the stunning views of the hills beyond.

In the front garden we went for something much more wild, in the form of a wildflower meadow. This required quite a bit of soil conditioning. The original top soil was transferred to fill the raised beds of the rear of the garden, and horticultural sand was added to the stoney subsoil beneath. This may seam a little counter-intuitive but the topsoil in this area is fairly rich and the wildflowers would have been quickly outcompeted by grass. Wildflowers thrive in lower fertility areas (e.g. roadsides). They are incredibly important habitats, considering that around 97% of wildflower meadows have been lost since the 1930s, they are arguably more important than ever. Indeed I have spent the last five years creating and establishing wildflower meadows on my own orchards in Sedbergh for this very reason. on this project we used a mix a native perennial and annual wildflowers sown by seed (along with a lot of yellow-rattle seeds to prevent any grass from overpowering the meadow) we created the perfect environment for a wildflower meadow to be thriving within 18 months. We also planted five young heritage apple trees endemic to the area, around the perimeter of the dry stone walls in the front garden. Finally we added cortes steel planters to the main patio along the house and, reused and repurposed cattle troughs and zinc pots for extra planting around the Creamery and front of the main property, highlighting the sites heritage, with a contemporary edge.

Over a year later of backbreaking work, the transformation of the garden is finally complete, and this labour of love has finally born fruit, with the plants having been hardened through uncommonly hot weather and drought through a very cold winter and as of the summer of 2026 they are thriving, and awash with the gentle hum of pollinating insects. A veritable oasis surrounded by the beautiful and stark desert of low clipped grass and limestone paving. This is a garden that I will be returning to year on year to see how it develops and thrives well into the future.