Garden Tour to Yorkshire with Jimi Blake-Huntingbrook Gardens.
Day 1: Mount St. John Private Garden:
A stunning contemporary garden on the edge of the North York Moors with far reaching views across the Vale of York. On a clear day the towers of the Minster are visible on the horizon 25 miles to the South. At an elevation of 500 feet the garden at Mount St John is in effect a homage to this view. The garden creates a contemporary terraced setting for the 18th century house, and the formal areas of the garden – the terraces, flower garden, fruit & vegetable garden – contrast beautifully with the romantic valley garden.
Mount St John is a private garden and the owners commissioned Tom Stuart Smith in 2004 create a design. He drew inspiration from the field patterns visible from the house and the main garden was completed in 2006, the valley garden commenced is still ongoing. The monastic foundations of the preceptory belonging to the Knights Hospitaller of the order of St John of Jerusalem lie in the field below the Georgian property of 1720. The Victorian kitchen garden and cut flower garden supply local restaurants with produce.
Restored Victorian Walled Kitchen Garden
Terrace, Border & Praire Garden-Designed By Tom Stuart Smith
My Top Plant Picks from this garden visit are:
- Eryngium bourgatii (Mediterranean Sea Holly)-its branched stems with extraordinarily eye-catching, cone-like flower-heads with narrow, spiny, silvery-blue bracts make a wonderful statement in this garden when combined with Salvias, Box Balls and Dark Sedums.
- Hakonechloa macra (Hakone Grass)-The handsome and eye-catching foliage of Hakone Grass is used very well along the base of a terrace wall and edging the pathway. Its a really good looking grass planted on-mass like this or in pots.
- Achillea Gold plate-one of the tallest of the Yarrow Plants with its bright yellow umbel flowers really putting on a show in the terraced gravel beds among the stipa calamagrostis, Echinacea, Persicaria taurus and Allium ‘Red Mohican’
