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The Yorkshire Lavender Gardens
Walk amongst the lavender flowers, with their stunning array of different colours - white, pinks, blues, lilacs
to magnificent deep lavender purples with a range of distinct and heady scents. A truly wonderful experience.Come and see our unique Lavender Maze, Mediterranean Dry Garden, Lavender ‘White Rose’ of Yorkshire, Sensory Garden, Purple Patch Garden, Themed Gardens, Stream Garden, The Wibbly Wobbly Way, Bog Garden, Natural Wild Flower Grassland Meadow, probably Yorkshire's largest Snakes and Ladders, The Lynne Goodwill Memorial Garden, Sculpture Park and much much more!
Wander in the Parkland, sit and admire the fabulous views and watch the fallow deer, highland cattle and pet lambs nearby. See our guide on how to grow lavender and The Compost Heap Blog - the Yorkshire Lavender gardeners' blog.
The following was written by Lin Hawthrone B.Ed.Hons (Biol.) HND Hort
Horticulturist, writer and Head Gardener of a private Estate in Yorkshire
A sign on the shop door into the garden says "Please feel free to weed", there can be few other gardens so relaxed and welcoming. Walking east from the door, is a south-west facing slope
graced by twin plats formed from diagonal rows of mounded lavenders, resumbline a tapestry of soft grey, embroidered French knots, studded in hues of lavender-blue and purple, and edged by
silver-white, dark-flowered L. X chaytorae 'Sawyers', one of the toughest, brightest and most well-scented of the silver lavenders.
At the top of the embroidered plats, the eye is drawn by an enormous blue gate, in Alice-in-Wonderland scale, alongside which runs the Mediterranean Dry Garden, mulched with gravel, a technique that keeps drainage at the plant neck free. Perhaps more important though here are truly modern inspirational plantings in which lavenders jostle imaginatively placed drought-tolerant and aromatic companions. Their grey-green jues and enhanced by the blue-greens of euphorbias, the blue-greys of eucalyptus, the deepest sea-greens of rosemaries, the pale olives of Phlomis fruticosa, the sage greens and greys of many salvias and the many texctured silvers of artemisias and santolinas. The backcloth is shot through with jewel-like alliums, marigolds, nigellas and California poppies, and punctuated by the spires and spikes of self-sown, blue-metallic sea hollies (Eryngium), verbascums, Verbena bonariensis and ornamental thistles, Silybum marianum and Onopordon giganteum. The glistening, translucent flowerheads of grasses - stipas, pennisetums, and miscanthus - bring a whispering aural dimension to the whole.
The Wibbly Wobbly Way an undulating pathway, looking for all the world like wind-formed green dunes, adjoins the Mediterranean Dry Garden, rolling out a series of different perspectives on the plantings below, including, to the south, a wild meadow, the sensuous delights of the Lavender Maze and the Sensory Garden, in which all of the plants demand to be smelled, stroked and heard. Sound and movement are ever-present elements in this garden; the lavenders, sages, marjorams, hyssops, rosemarys and the many other herbs that are grown here are naturally nectar rich, attracting bumbline bees and butterflies in their hundreds.
Along the northern margins, there is an unexpected Bog Garden, and yet more inspirational planting in the Purple Patch displays the virtues of foliage contrasts offsetting greys with red and purple leaves of bugle, Euphorbia polychroma 'Purpurea', and Cotinus 'Royal Purple', along with coloured leaved sages, and red-leaved orache, this among the many vibrantly coloured salad leaves and expanding range of culinary herbs will coming into season.
At the western edge are planted rows of L. x intermedia 'Grosso' - the cultivar grown commercially in Provence - light, open mounds clothed in a haze of long-stemmed, intensely aromatic flowerheads. As in Provence, flowerheads are harvested at the end of summer and the plants are pruned back hard. Nearby, the Yorkshire Rose, created in L. angustifolia 'Hidcote' and underplanted with fragrant thymes, looks out across the Vale of York.
Here, too, can be found the pyramid sculptures at the heart of the memorial garden to Nigel's wife Lynne, the inspiration for this glorious garden and guiding spirit for the peace and tranquillity that has grown out of its creation. When she died 17 years ago from breast cancer, her family, Nigel, Sam and Emma Jane, then only 5 and 3 years old, embarked on this project. Ten years after first opening Yorkshire Lavender, together they have explored the story of this ancient herb in all its aspects; lavender as a garden plant, a culinary herb, a calming herb, a healing herb, each new discovery yielding more knowledge to share and leading on to further plans for this lovely place. They have made the most positive assertion that since life is so short and you only live once, we must make the most of it.
Over the past decade, Nigel, Sam, Emma Jane and their team have created a series of gardens that, in the true spirit of the best gardens, will educate, stimulate and inspire for years to come. In the future, there will be more and different herbs, more meadows, more wetland plantings, perhaps a woodland garden and perhaps a lake. But for the present, there can be few better places in which to make memories, or simply to sit, enjoy and smile.
At the top of the embroidered plats, the eye is drawn by an enormous blue gate, in Alice-in-Wonderland scale, alongside which runs the Mediterranean Dry Garden, mulched with gravel, a technique that keeps drainage at the plant neck free. Perhaps more important though here are truly modern inspirational plantings in which lavenders jostle imaginatively placed drought-tolerant and aromatic companions. Their grey-green jues and enhanced by the blue-greens of euphorbias, the blue-greys of eucalyptus, the deepest sea-greens of rosemaries, the pale olives of Phlomis fruticosa, the sage greens and greys of many salvias and the many texctured silvers of artemisias and santolinas. The backcloth is shot through with jewel-like alliums, marigolds, nigellas and California poppies, and punctuated by the spires and spikes of self-sown, blue-metallic sea hollies (Eryngium), verbascums, Verbena bonariensis and ornamental thistles, Silybum marianum and Onopordon giganteum. The glistening, translucent flowerheads of grasses - stipas, pennisetums, and miscanthus - bring a whispering aural dimension to the whole.
The Wibbly Wobbly Way an undulating pathway, looking for all the world like wind-formed green dunes, adjoins the Mediterranean Dry Garden, rolling out a series of different perspectives on the plantings below, including, to the south, a wild meadow, the sensuous delights of the Lavender Maze and the Sensory Garden, in which all of the plants demand to be smelled, stroked and heard. Sound and movement are ever-present elements in this garden; the lavenders, sages, marjorams, hyssops, rosemarys and the many other herbs that are grown here are naturally nectar rich, attracting bumbline bees and butterflies in their hundreds.
Along the northern margins, there is an unexpected Bog Garden, and yet more inspirational planting in the Purple Patch displays the virtues of foliage contrasts offsetting greys with red and purple leaves of bugle, Euphorbia polychroma 'Purpurea', and Cotinus 'Royal Purple', along with coloured leaved sages, and red-leaved orache, this among the many vibrantly coloured salad leaves and expanding range of culinary herbs will coming into season.
At the western edge are planted rows of L. x intermedia 'Grosso' - the cultivar grown commercially in Provence - light, open mounds clothed in a haze of long-stemmed, intensely aromatic flowerheads. As in Provence, flowerheads are harvested at the end of summer and the plants are pruned back hard. Nearby, the Yorkshire Rose, created in L. angustifolia 'Hidcote' and underplanted with fragrant thymes, looks out across the Vale of York.
Here, too, can be found the pyramid sculptures at the heart of the memorial garden to Nigel's wife Lynne, the inspiration for this glorious garden and guiding spirit for the peace and tranquillity that has grown out of its creation. When she died 17 years ago from breast cancer, her family, Nigel, Sam and Emma Jane, then only 5 and 3 years old, embarked on this project. Ten years after first opening Yorkshire Lavender, together they have explored the story of this ancient herb in all its aspects; lavender as a garden plant, a culinary herb, a calming herb, a healing herb, each new discovery yielding more knowledge to share and leading on to further plans for this lovely place. They have made the most positive assertion that since life is so short and you only live once, we must make the most of it.
Over the past decade, Nigel, Sam, Emma Jane and their team have created a series of gardens that, in the true spirit of the best gardens, will educate, stimulate and inspire for years to come. In the future, there will be more and different herbs, more meadows, more wetland plantings, perhaps a woodland garden and perhaps a lake. But for the present, there can be few better places in which to make memories, or simply to sit, enjoy and smile.