On the face of it, there is a wonderful simplicity to the gardens at Brodsworth Hall in winter. Dig deeper though, and there’s a meticulous honouring of the past, paired with a drive for new developments that pay glorious homage to the founders of the garden. “We’re storytellers,” says head gardener Dan Hale. And every snip of a shear, secateurs or hedge trimmer adds a few more words to a beautiful, ongoing work of non-fiction.
The beauty of Brodsworth is that the story is told in almost its entirety in the depths of winter, as layers of topiary stand indestructible on the coldest days, a wonderful mix of the curvaceous and the geometric.
It could be argued that winter is the peak. In the spectacular cedar beds the imposing topiary is at its sharpest, and evergreens including Prunus lusitanica, Ilex aquifolium ‘J.C. van Tol’ and Taxus baccata ‘Fastigiata’ at their best, frozen in their post-clipped finery. The tale they tell is of a style of gardening passed down through generations.
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In 1913, a keen amateur photographer called Alf Edwards moved to the Yorkshire estate to become personal valet to then owner Charles Thellusson. The many pictures Alf took of the garden have allowed Dan and his team to preserve much of the topiary exactly as it would have looked more than century ago.
The view from the Summerhouse behind the hall – at the top of a steep bank planted with Mediterranean shrubs and perennials – provides the perfect vantage point to survey the main topiary beds. “We are able to cut them perfectly to the height they are in the old photographs, ”explains Dan. “When we’re trimming, one of us will stand by the Summerhouse, another on the Top Terrace and another on a cherry picker, and we’ll radio each other to say if any of the plants are still a few inches too high and need a bit more taken off.”
The topiary is clipped a few times a year. The yews are cut “very tight”, but others, such as the grand holm oaks (Quercus ilex) are allowed to be a little looser. Hollies and mature yews are pollarded if needed during the growing season.
One of us stands by the Summerhouse and another on a cherry picker and we radio each other to say if any of the plants are still a few inches too high
Despite the thin soil, regularly replenishing it with mulch allows the plants to bounce back from clipping. “Gardeners can often be good at feeding things like roses, but it’s easy to forget to improve the soil around other shrubs and trees,” says Dan. “The mulching helps alleviate compaction, which is so important on shallow soil.”
There is something refreshing about seeing a garden that has large parts obviously tamed, in an era where ‘wildness’ is en vogue and the temerity of gardeners to take charge of the landscape is perhaps under greater scrutiny than ever. Scratch beneath the surface and the challenge that comes from the approach is that apparent formality is not necessarily a turnoff for biodiversity.
Bee orchids grow on the ridges of the geometric formal lawns, which are left to grow longer. Some 70-80 tonnes of home-made compost are made each year, with regular clipping of hedges and topiary providing a wealth of green waste, composted in just four months and used to enrich the soil and lock in carbon. Mulching forms the bedrock of the health and wellbeing of the plants and the soil, and has so far kept box blight at bay in the main, although any plants that succumb are not replaced like for like.
Gardeners can often be good at feeding things like roses, but it’s easy to forget to improve the soil around other shrubs and trees
Moving further away from the house, the planting becomes looser in style, framed by carefully placed rockwork and long-standing fixtures including the Folly, Summerhouse and the Grotto, an elaborate fernery planted in the base of an old limestone quarry.
Dan added Trachycarpus fortunei in the Grotto for structure and to provide shade for tree ferns, and in winter they take on an ethereal other-worldly nature as the garden lies dormant. Strictly speaking, they should jar with the formal character here, but they perfectly slot into the scale of the garden. “All the different parts of the garden speak to each other,” says Dan, “rather than being separate zones.”
By the Target Range, a 160m-long formal lawn that divides the walls of the quarry and the rose garden, Dan is experimenting with growing annuals, based on a recently uncovered network of flowerbeds and stone paths. Closer to the house, prosaic laurel hedges with no historical value are being stripped out to expose more of the mature treescape, and old plants pruned back where possible to bring them in keeping with the well-shaped evergreen trademark of Brodsworth. Even mature yew trees were cut back this summer to return them to topiary, and are already bouncing back.
And after a challenging growing season in 2025, research is ongoing to look at the viability of restoring the underground Victorian rainwater tanks that lie close to the house, to help the garden cope with dry springs and summers. It all sums up Dan’s philosophy. “We are driving into the future, with an eye on the past.”
Useful information
- Address: Brodsworth Hall & Gardens, Brodsworth, Doncaster, South Yorkshire DN5 7XJ.
- Tel 01302 722598.
- Web english-heritage.org.uk
- Open Daily 10am-5pm. Admission prices start at £11.80.
