Park Hall Gardens

You know a garden is good when it inspires to you change your own garden design. Park Hall Gardens in the Chesterfield suburb of Walton has two acres of grounds with formal areas, woodland, pleached circle, gravel garden and masses of roses.

The house itself is Grade II listed with parts of it dating from the 16^th and 17^th century. It was once the centre of a much larger estate. Most of the farmland that surrounded it is now housing but there's plenty left for gardening.

One of the star attractions in the garden is the pleached circle. The owners originally tried it with non-fruiting pears but it didn't take. They tried it again with hornbeam trees and with the apricot coloured roses it really is the perfect romantic space.

In the middle is a sunken garden with a small pond with metal heron. Looking straight on you can see through to the next section of the garden.

There's another water feature further on but this one is a simple fountain surrounded by some shady spots.

In the woodland areas paths take you up gentle slopes. Native trees mix with acers with greens of all shades across the palate. 

My eye is always caught by a hydrangea and this one is a little bit different. It is the climbing variety petiolaris which has delicate white flowers in a lacecap style. The bonus is that it also grows well up a north facing wall.

With so much space to tend it's no surprise that the compost bins take up the amount of space of many people's entire garden!

Whatever the size of your garden there are so many ideas you can use at home. The plants on these steps are waiting to be potted out but you could set up a very colourful display.

This is the part of the garden that has inspired us to change our own. Our lawn has never been up to much and is so small it's barely worth getting the mower out. My beloved rosemary bush has died so needs to come out. As we have a huge redcurrant bush at the allotment I no longer need the redcurrants at home which grow against the sun-soaked wall. So the lawn looks set to go to be replaced by gravel and sun-loving plants will take the place of fruit in the borders.

The garden is open by arrangement for groups of 10+ on behalf of the National Garden Scheme.