On top of the world!

English Heritage is climbing every mountain in its quest to create a unique plant collection at Brodsworth Hall, South Yorkshire.

A fascinating alpine garden has been planted at the 19th century country house, near Doncaster, hosting over 200 different varieties from across the world.

Brodsworth has one of the UK’s most authentic Victorian gardens and since 1990 English has undertaken a massive restoration project, reviving its historic character using period plants.  But now sights have been set even higher and the new garden celebrates the hardy flora of the world’s greatest mountain landscapes.

The project has been inspired by the travels of the Thellusson family, who built the Hall in the 1860s, and enjoyed the trappings of wealth and privilege to the full.  They spent some of their holidays in exotic far-flung destinations, from the Rocky Mountains in North America to the European Alps.  Charles Sabine Thellusson, who built the house, owned the world’s largest private sailing yacht, while his sons regularly journeyed up the western coast of Scotland in their steam boats and along the fjords of Norway.  

Inspired by these travels, English Heritage has selected plants from the areas the Thellussons visited for the collection, which is located in Brodsworth Hall’s spectacular Rock Garden.   Amongst them are edelweiss – beloved of Sound of Music fans - stonecrop,  moss campion, rock rose and gentians, some of which grow on the “Roof of Britain” in the Scottish Uplands.

Dan Booth, Brodsworth Hall Head Gardener and Visitor Operations Manager, explained: “We have no firm evidence that an alpine garden existed at Brodsworth, but a rock garden and grotto is mentioned in 19th century estate accounts, and it’s very likely this featured alpine plants. Victorians were obsessive plant collectors and the garden pays homage to this unbridled zeal, which was the basis of some of present day Britain’s great collections.”

A total of 600 hundred plants have been used, geographically laid out with Scottish and Norwegian alpines on top, plants from the Rockies to the west and European specimens to the east. Most are small and slow growing, but also potentially long-lived.  What they lack in size they make up for in colour, sporting red, yellow, blue and white flowers.  Special alpine soil has been used, but some plants are rooted in niches of  rock and lumps of tufa, a rare type of limestone. Rocky slopes and exposed outcrops are their natural domain, where thawing snow means in spring there’s plenty of water, but often followed by dry summers.

Kevin Tansey, English Heritage Senior Gardener, trawled through weighty botanical encyclopaedias to research the garden.  He added: “An alpine plant is defined as one that grows above the tree line. But that covers a wide range and some of those we have used grow at altitudes of 10,000 feet high.  We have spent 15 months researching and sourcing the plants, with those from America proving the hardest to find.  They’ll take some looking after, but with tender loving care, we’re confident they’ll thrive.”