Brodsworth Hall Tour: This Historic Parkland Is Based On The Original Victorian Designs

Brodsworth Hall in South Yorkshire is a historic estate that dates back hundreds of years.

However, the parkland is all based on the original Victorian planting designs, with work being done since English Heritage took on the property to restore the gardens to their former glory.

In June, I visited the gardens at Brodsworth and chatted with the Head Gardener Dan Hale, who has worked there for nine years.

The Victorian Design

“Brodsworth is a Victorian formal garden with all the key Victorian features,” says Dan.

“There’s a Victorian formal flower garden with about 24,000 bedding plants, a Victorian fern dell and an amazing Victorian rose collection.

“Everything we do at Brodsworth Hall is focused around the Victorian Era. So all the plants, all the designs and styles that we do, it’s all Victorian.

“Every plant that you see would have been available or introduced pre or in that era – that’s the style that we adhere to.

“There’s so much to see at Brodsworth and there’s so many different elements to the garden.”

The Topiary & Formal Flower Garden

“I suppose one of the key things that everybody talks about with Brodsworth is the topiary and the amount of evergreens we’ve got,” Dan shares.

“We’ve got over a thousand pieces of clipped evergreens. One of my favourite plants has to be Taxus baccata, commonly known as Yew.

“It makes up the bulk of our topiary pieces, is the dividing line between the formal and informal gardens here and is also an amazing tree when it’s allowed to become natural.

“Inside the topiary pieces is the amazing flower garden. There are about 24,000 plants in here now on slightly mounded beds.

“With this design, it’s very much a lot of begonias in different colours, including red, yellow, orange, and this amazing pink, which I think has actually become my favourite one now.

“We’ve also got dot plants in there, so we’ve got cannas and bananas. The Trachycarpus fortunei stay in all year round and give a nice height and structure to the beds.”

The Victorian Fern Dell

“We’ve got an amazing Victorian fern dell, which tells the story of the fern craze from that period,” Dan states.

“The idea in there was to showcase your collection of ferns, so instead of it being a lot of ferns planted in one area, we try to do one specialist fern in each section of the garden to really showcase each fern off.

“The one thing I’d say about the fern deli is that it’s quite open to the elements, so we’ve planted some of the ferns in the shade of other larger specimens.

“By doing this, we’re highlighting the fact that some of the ferns are more shade-loving.”

Visiting Brodsworth

“The most rewarding aspect of tending to the garden is probably positive visitor reactions,” explains Dan.

“That’s what we do it for. We do it for people to come and immerse themselves into that period of garden history and keep Victorian gardens relevant for future generations.

” I always said that to the team and volunteers that we’re writing our own names into the history book, as the Victorian gardeners before us did.

“I do hope visitors take away inspiration for their own gardens and can experience a little bit of joy when they come to Brodsworth.”

To find out more about visiting Brodsworth Hall, head over to the English Heritage’s website here.