Examiner Garden of the Year 2008 winner: Liz Philpot

Jul 23 2008 by Val Javin, Huddersfield Daily Examiner

BUBBLY Liz Philpot has gardening in her blood. And the skills that she learned as a child working in gardens alongside her grandfather and then her dad have helped her create this year’s Examiner Garden of the Year.

Judges were blown away by the garden’s sheer exuberance and colour. This is a garden fuelled by a passion for plants, plants, plants.

Lilies, roses and pinks coat the air with heavy fragrance, penstemons nod gently in hidden corners and exquisitely detailed astrantias add delicacy and style. There are campanulas and lupins, perennial geraniums, candelabra primulas, poppies and a pretty dark eyed cream verbascum that you want to reach out and pluck.

Clematis scramble wherever they can find a perch and alliums with their giant round heads make a real look-at-me statement.

It’s a garden of surprises – and humour – tucked away behind the family home that Liz shares in Meltham with her husband Rob and sons Sam, 24, and Joe who is 22.

The garden adjoins open fields and offers views across to surrounding hills. Not an easy site perhaps, exposed as it is to wind and heavy weather, but Liz has managed to use the landscape perfectly as a backdrop to her own soft, flowing planting style.

Among the colour and the specimen plants, watch out for the jokey signs, the birds’ nests and the vegetables. For as well as beds brimming with blooms, Liz’s garden boasts giant cabbages, beans, lettuces, strawberries, tomatoes and potatoes in bags, all grown with the same care and success that powers the flowers. Look closely and you’ll see heritage varieties growing.

Little wonder then that the garden is teeming with wildlife. A robin has been known to nest in the barbecue, bats visit and there are birds nesting in the clematis.

Quite how Liz finds the time to nurture this delightful garden is a mystery. She runs a home and works full-time in the administrative back-up for the mental health team at St Luke’s. But you suspect that every waking minute is spent in this idyllic garden which once a year is open to the public to raise money for two local organisations, the Samaritans and Meltham’s Methodist Church.

Liz, helped by friends and neighbours, serves up cream teas on fundraising days and sells plants to the many who call.

“The postman spotted me in the village and when he realised that all the extra plants he had seen were for sale for charity, he came with a shopping list!”

Examiner garden writer Graham Porter, one of the competition judges, said: “ Liz’s garden is probably the best example of a modern cottage garden anywhere in the Huddersfield area with a collection of plants to die for.”

And William Armitage, director of competition sponsors Armitages Garden Centres, said: “It’s a really relaxed mix of plants put together with passion and blending in very well with the surrounding landscape.”

As for Liz, she’s delighted to have won the competition at only her second attempt. “I’m thrilled. I can’t quite believe it. We’ve lived here for 21 years but this garden is about six years old. To begin, we had a big lawn and a vegetable garden which was ideal for the children. It’s just evolved into what it is now.”

And that’s a real winner of a garden.