Mark Gregory's Welcome to Yorkshire Garden wins Gold Medal and People's Choice Award

From Country Living

Mark Gregory has won a Chelsea Flower Show 2019 Gold Medal in the Show Gardens category for his Welcome to Yorkshire garden. The garden has also received the People's Choice Award. It's the second year in a row Mark has won both titles.

Before the winners were announced, Country Living asked Mark what it would mean for him to win a Gold medal this year.

"It’s lovely to dream – this is my 99^th garden and before last year I’d never won a People’s Choice Award. I’ve still never won Best in Show. So I dare to dream." Mark told Country Living on the 2019 Chelsea VIP day.

"I’m delighted with the garden and the clients are happy with it. The public and celebrities who have been on it think it's great. I met Jim Carter (who plays Mr Carson in Downton Abbey) who’s a Yorkshireman and he said couldn’t believe it.

"I can’t deny that I’d be disappointed if I slipped a medal. But ultimately I’d get over it. I’m aiming for Gold and I’ll be disappointed if I miss it."

Well no need to be disappointed, Mark, because the Welcome to Yorkshire team's hard work has really paid off. Here's everything you need to know about the garden...

What is the Welcome to Yorkshire garden 2019 design about?

"It’s the most ambitious build I’ve ever done – it’s the maximum I think you can build in 18 days without pre-making anything off site," Mark told Country Living.

The 2019 Welcome to Yorkshire garden celebrates Yorkshire's canals and the rural drama of the county's industrial heritage. It aims to strike the perfect balance between the industrial and the beautiful.

The highlight and main feature of the garden is an authentically built canal which flows straight down the middle of the space, passing through genuine canal lock gates.

"I thought 'if I’m going to do a canal, I’ve got to have real canal gates'," Mark told Country Living. "Initially, the Canal River Trust wanted to build me new gates but I said 'I don’t want new gates'. So these are scrap gates – gates that have done their time and are a bit rotten. The gates went back to where they were made in Yorkshire and the apprentice patched them up. They were originally in the Huddersfield Canal."

The canal will be framed by a towpath to show how the waterways were used for industry transportation.

This year's Welcome to Yorkshire garden will also feature, similar to last year, a small building. This time, it resembles a lock keeper's lodge with a colourful garden and vegetable patch. On the opposite side of the canal will be a perennial meadow.

Garden highlights:

• canal

• canal lock gates

• towpath

• lock keeper's lodge

• colourful garden and vegetable patch

• perennial meadow

The planting scheme aims to highlight Yorkshire's rich natural environment and diversity of native flora alongside cultivated varieties.

The designer, Mark Gregory, who makes this the 99th Chelsea garden he has worked on, says: “I’m honoured to have been asked to create Welcome to Yorkshire’s 10th garden at RHS Chelsea. My design will try to capture the magic of the narrow canals, a stunning legacy of the Industrial Revolution, which are now a massive part of tourism in Yorkshire after being carefully and lovingly renovated to create a unique ecosystem and valuable leisure resource.

"The garden will have all the drama and excitement of a working canal, with two gates and a bypass sluice system with lots of moving water. It will feature authentic Yorkshire stonework and trees local to the county with a modern style perennial meadow bordering the canal towpath. Chelsea 2018 was all about the detail and my ambition for 2019 is to raise the bar yet again.”

A reminder of the Gold Medal-Winning Welcome to Yorkshire garden 2018...

Last year's Welcome to Yorkshire garden, also designed by Mark and inspired by the Yorkshire Dales, won three awards: a Gold Medal in the Show Gardens category, Best Construction and the Show Gardens People's Choice Award.

"I tried to optimise 'Yorkshireness'," Mark told Country Living about his 2018 design during an interview at Chelsea last year. "What I've tried to do is make a modern creamery – I imagine it set on a farmland in Wensleydale, which is famous for its cheese and buttercup meadows."

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