Four generations of one family have nurtured the gardens of a secluded farm, set in an ancient wooded North Yorkshire valley. The result, says Ruth Campbell, is simply breathtaking

NESTLED between heather clad moors and Hodge Beck, on the gentle, south facing slopes of the lush green and secluded ancient wooded valley of Sleightholmedale, the James’s family garden comes as an unexpected delight.

More than 350ft up in the North York Moors National Park, winters can be cold and austere in this remote spot, with long periods of snow. Spring comes late, but cool summers encourage a long flowering season.

If gardens could sing, this one would be a full-blown, passionate spectacle of an opera. Majestic, statuesque plants dominate the upper reaches, above the terraced beds of the old walled garden, which are bursting with billowing, cascading masses of colour and texture.

Because this sheltered valley has its own unique microclimate, with a mix of limestone, acid moorland soil and pockets of clay, it suits a range of interesting plants, many of which pop up, harmoniously, again and again in drifts and clumps throughout the garden.

With everything from vividly coloured delphiniums, propagated from old Edwardian survivors, to yellow and white foxgloves, scented roses, pretty daisies and dazzling yellow Turk’s cap lilies jostling for attention, it is hard to pick out the stars of this particularly dramatic show.

But the sumptuous and abundant blue, pink, yellow and red hollyhocks , which reach up to a towering 13ft high, were recently deservedly described by garden expert Sarah Raven as "world class", and the stunning chorus of highly prized crimson red springeri tulips, believed to be one of the biggest concentrations of this unusual species in the UK, which spread out, in their thousands, below the shade of the crab apple trees in early June, certainly command applause. The magnificent, and much coveted, intense blue Himalayan poppies which thrive in these south facing slopes, hybridising around the trees and shrubs outside the walled garden, also deserve a few "bravos".

Named by one national magazine as "one of Britain’s most romantic gardens" , this three acre plot at Sleightholmedale Lodge, near the village of Fadmoor on the southern edge of the moors, is a true family affair.

Nurtured with love and care over more than 100 years by four generations, the farmhouse and garden were a gift to the current owner Patrick James’s great-grandmother, Ulrica, the youngest daughter of the Earl of Feversham, in the late 19th century.

Patrick, a landscape architect, and his acupuncturist wife Natasha moved into the seven-bedroom farmhouse with their three children a year ago. Although passionate about the garden, Patrick concedes they have much to learn.

For more than 25 years, up until recently, his mother Rosanna, 73, a lifelong lover of wild flowers and, like her mother before her, a talented plantswoman, has been the garden’s driving force while Patrick’s father Oliver, 71, a retired professor of medicine, tended the vegetables.

With a passion for naturalistic, relaxed and informal planting long before it became fashionable, Rosanna, who grew up here, has learnt what works best over the years. And she has put the manure from the cattle and sheep on their 350-acre farm to good use, ensuring the soil stays rich and fertile.

From cottage to walled garden, formal orchard and rock garden, there is a casual and uncomplicated mix of styles which is refreshingly unselfconscious. Just off centre stage, grassy swards, with paths mown through them, dotted with naturalised bulbs and charming perennials, provide an attractive contrast to the manicured lawns, while an old, rustic summerhouse underneath a cherry tree is the perfect setting for family picnics.

Rosanna still comes and helps out most weeks. “It is in her blood. My grandmother and mother, both brilliant plantswomen growing everything from cuttings and seed, really got this garden going,” says Patrick. “The perennial meadow, with its wild, unplanned feel, is a look many people are trying to achieve now, but my mother was doing it 20 years ago.”

It is certainly a garden which inspires devotion. We meet Bob Pettit, now in his eighties, who came here from Middlesbrough as a seven-year-old evacuee during the war, when he was taken on by Sleightholme Lodge’s gardener. Bob, who lives in the village and ended up marrying the gardener’s daughter, worked in the gardens here for more than 40 years and now comes down most mornings as a volunteer, helping out the one full and one part-time gardener.

He is working in the main walled garden, which was originally laid out in the early 20th century by Patrick’s great-grandfather Everard Baring, of the banking family, also military secretary to Lord Curzon, Viceroy of India. Influenced by the Mogul rose gardens of India, Baring divided it into four smaller gardens, framed by oak trellises and trained fruit trees. In 1935, his daughter, Patrick’s grandmother, added a water garden, rocky terraces and planted loose clumps of wild shrubs and roses.

In the 1940s, the widely spaced cherry trees were planted into the adjoining meadow and the spaces between filled with wild daffodils. But as the original roses died off in the Sixties and Seventies, Rosanna, ever the practical gardener, replanted the formal gardens with perennials and bulbs, prolific self-seeders that needed less looking after and tend to take care of themselves from year to year.

As a result, even the garden walls are overflowing with seedlings and full-blown plants and hundreds of white native foxgloves - the James family cull the pink ones, which are naturally dominant - make a particularly striking display.

As the vigorous colonisers developed, Rosanna planted them into the meadow grassland so that now, once the daffodils have finished, the naturalised hardy plants, from the white Mount Everest allium to aquilegias, the delicate pignut and dazzling yellow Lilium pyrenaicum continue to bloom until the meadow is cut for hay.

Keen to continue this loose, naturalistic form of planting, Patrick, who has assisted acclaimed gardener Nigel Dunnett on three winning gardens at the Chelsea Flower Show in recent years, ensures the grass is cut off and removed once the flowers have gone. “We are weakening it all the time, so that the flowers will thrive,” he explains. “It’s practical gardening too. The fact that it is relatively low maintenance was one of the reasons for doing it in the first place.”

His grandmother planted the first few of the sprengeri tulip, unusual because it flowers after other tulips have finished, in early June, and also because it grows so well in shade. That was in the 1950s. Since then, they have spread quite rapidly. Because they are so difficult to cultivate, bulbs cost an exorbitant £6 each. But Rosanna scattered the seeds, which can take five or six years to flower and 50 years to naturalise properly, in receptive, shaded sites. Like most of the plants here, the sprengeri has multiplied on site. And so, although the garden retains its original formal structure, it has continued to evolve, and thrive, in a charmingly random manner.

This is a garden that has never set out to be stylish, for there is little here that is contrived or artfully designed. But that is what makes the overall effect all the more breathtaking.

Patrick and Natasha certainly have a hard act to follow.

  • Sleightholmedale Lodge, which has been part of the National Gardens Scheme since 1947, opens to the public on July 4 and 5, 2-6pm. Visitors welcome by arrangement May to September. Contact: Patrick@shdfarm.co.uk