Havoc Hall, Yorkshire; in harmony with nature

Hello my name is David Liss and my wife Maggie and I moved here in 2008 from London. We were looking for a garden on the edge of a village with great views and more or less a blank canvas from which we could make the garden or gardens that we'd always thought we'd like. So what I'm going to show you is the result of that, it's a cross between symmetry and order and wildflower planting. I hope you'll agree that we've covered most bases after you've seen what follows. So this is the east garden which is a mixed herbaceous shrub and rose garden. Roses obviously looking particularly good at the moment but in the spring we have two viburnum plicartens which are magnificent, smothered in beautiful white flowers. We have agaria elliptica on the east wall which is excellent in the winter and as you can see selectrum and salvius geraniums, a real mix in this garden. So this is the silver garden which was made in 2012, the year of our silver wedding anniversary. As you can see it's a mainly silver themed area with four pyrus sarsapolias being the main feature. So the patio garden and the south facing walls of the house are clad with roses, an iceberg growing through a moving beckier, a rather faded now etwilder holland which was beautiful a couple of weeks ago and will re-flower later in the year. The rose pergola are not yet in full bloom but I think there are seven or eight different roses on the pergola, most of them highly scented. We have in the high 40s numbers of different species of roses and there are around 84 roses in total in the garden. In the fountain area the box shapes are surrounded by lavender, hiddcock blue. In the spring the bed is full of tulips which we've left in for a few years now and have repeat flowered. The borders surrounding the fountain area contain geranium, rosanne, some hostas and astrantias. The knot garden shapes are a traditional Tudor love knot which we found in a book on the subject and the other two shapes are somewhat cheesily an M inside a D for Maggie and David. The planting is all white in the knot garden. At the moment the roses are probably dominating and there are 10 macmillan nurse roses and four rosa creme de la creme. The herbaceous garden at this time of year is dominated by roses, dolphiniums, nepeta, astrantia, peonies, looking particularly good at the moment but we also use grasses in our herbaceous borders so there's calamagrostis and millennia as well as miscanthus in most of the borders in the garden together with a couple of stifler gigantea at the entrance to the knot garden. In the lower herbaceous garden the colours tend to be hotter later in the summer but at the moment it's fairly blue and yellow with some pink as you can see but the real feature is the ornamental cherry tree which is smothered in a Paul's Himalayan musk and absolutely spectacular at this time of year. If I was asked what my favourite plant is it arguably is the yew. It is such a structural plant that can be shaped and at the top of the herbaceous garden we have 13 yew shapes which survive well in the clay soil because the drainage is so good at the top of the bank. Having established the wildflower area or the meadow area in 2009 it's taken us a long time to get a good mix of wildflowers and we've succeeded two years ago in establishing a good amount of yellow rattle which is now allowing more wildflowers to prosper. The south lawn is a symmetrically designed area using primarily hornbeam, hedging, hornbeam cubes, bleached hornbeam and fastidious hornbeam and on either side of the outside of the hornbeam hedging there are rows of amelanchies which are particularly good in spring for the flowers and in autumn for the leaf colour. Since we moved to Havercore we've more or less had a new project every year and this winter it was to make these new prairie beds on the south lawn. So the planting started in January and it's mainly a grass themed plan. As you can see we have Calamagrostis, Millennias, Miscanthus, Carex and interspersed amongst those are the likes of Phloemus Rosselliana, Savia Caridonna, Heleniums, Prairie Coneflowers, Echinacea. It's not looking like a proper prairie garden yet but hopefully by late summer it'll be taking greater shape. The woodland walk, Maggie my wife's favourite part of the garden and probably one of my favourite parts too. So lots of self-seeded plants in this area with Ligularia the Rocket being a particularly prolific one along with the Phloemus Rosselliana. Another prolific self-seeder is Archimella Mollis and here we see it in amongst some Phallectrum Blackstocking with Hosta Big Blue. And one of my favourite plants is the Geranium Dragonheart and looking back down the woodland walk from the north end you can also see that Aruncus has made a home by spreading around gently in the area. The drive is lined with eight field maples which over the last eight years we've been topiarising into the pyramid shapes that you see here. The courtyard area contains four topiarised Portuguese laurels currently coming into flower and the roses on the pergola include Litchfield Angel and Rose of Compassion.