Tour The Mysterious Gardens At Crook Hall With Head Gardener Cal Stewart

Crook Hall Gardens, a medieval property owned by The National Trust, is famed for its Arts & Craft-style garden rooms, allowing visitors to traverse winding pathways, explore its renowned Cotoneaster maze and revel at the unique plantings.

Throughout history, Crook Hall has welcomed esteemed poets such as John Ruskin and William Wordsworth, who found inspiration within its tranquil grounds.

I had the pleasure of chatting with Cal Stewart, the Head Gardener at Crook Hall, to uncover the fascinating history of the gardens and explore the delightful array of springtime flowers.

An Arts & Crafts Garden

“The garden is fairly modern in its planting but we play a part in the Arts and Crafts movement or try and replicate what you would have normally associated with that 19th-century garden design,” explains Cal.

“The space is divided up into lots of different rooms, with different colours and palettes to play with and textures to look at.

“Some of the rooms that we have here, for example, include the Silver and White Garden and the Shakespeare Garden, which are both brilliant reflections of the carefully planned style of the gardens.

“We do also have some of the more traditional elements too, like our Productive Garden where we show people how to grow food crops and be part of a self-sustaining world.”

Spring At Crook Hall

“Spring really is starting to burst into colour at Crook Hall Gardens,” shares Cal.

“All the beautiful Tulips and Daffodils are thriving and we’re still holding onto the last of the Hellebores, which are a great source of food for wildlife in winter.

“We also have some spectacular tree flowers coming into bloom. One of our historic pear trees is just about finishing its display, but a week ago it filled up the wall along the house with a Clematis armandii.

“Magnolias are some of my favourite flowering trees that we have, which are currently providing these wonderful, big blooms this spring.

“We also have lots of ornamental cherry trees, which are great for replicating that feel of rainfall in a garden as all those lovely petals drop to the floor.”

The Cotoneaster Maze

“One of my favourite features at Crook Hall is our famous Cotoneaster maze,” shares Cal.

“The Cotoneaster maze was planted in the year 2000, so it’s a modern feature, but the beautiful thing with mazes is that they are ancient in design.

“We’ve had mazes throughout much of humanity’s history, but it always brings out the child in all of us.

“It doesn’t matter if you’re four years old, seven years old, or seventy-eight. You can always associate with a maze, and the the idea of being lost and finding your own way through things is actually a bit of homage to what we do at Crook Hall – it’s the inspiration behind it all.”

Exploring The Rest Of The Garden

“Our herbaceous spring border is one of the first real splashes of colour you see when you come into the gardens,” explains Cal, as we enter the space.

“I love this mixture of spring flowering plants in the form of these wonderful Daffodil and Tulip bulbs and the gentle but vibrant Forget-Me-Nots.

“I also like that we include wildlife and nature in this border through the addition of a wildlife habitat for creatures like solitary bees, earwigs and lacewings to lay up over the winter time.

“It’s really important that we look after all the invertebrates that we find here.”

“The biggest room we have at Crook Hall are the two sides of our walled gardens, which is a lovely, sunny area,” he continues.

“The aspect here gives us the opportunity to really experiment with a cottage garden feel. So again, at this time of year, there’s lots of brilliant early spring flowering plants.

“There’s all the usual spring bulbs and then some really unique plants, such as the early flowering irises and the wallflowers in the borders.”

“I have lots of favourite areas in gardens as you can probably tell, but I particularly love the orchard that we have here,” Cal says.

“There’s nothing that matches the feeling on a sunny spring day than walking underneath the flowering apples, pears and cherries and hearing the birds and the bees enjoying it as much as I am.

“I find that in this area I can reflect and relax, which is something that is so valuable to me.”

Visiting Crook Hall Gardens

“We want to make sure that Crook Hall is a special place for everyone to enjoy,” says Cal.

“This is a very small garden, but with every square inch here we make use of it and we try and demonstrate that through very precise and best practice in horticulture, you can do so much.

“We want this garden to tell stories and ensure that everybody is included and everyone is welcome.”

To visit Crook Hall Gardens, head over to the National Trust website.