Jonathan Denby - Behind the designer...

Jonathan Denby is a Victorian gardening specialist, advocate of Slow Life and owner of the South Lakes Hotels group in the Lake District, England. His garden at Yewbarrow House in Grange over Sands, Cumbria is open for the National Garden Scheme and is one of the few ‘starred’ private gardens in the ‘Good Gardens Guide’. Appealing to the Japanese love of Beatrix Potter stories, Jonathan Denby’s ‘Mr McGregor’s Garden’ will be popular with the crowds whilst the sunflowers in his design provide a less innocent subtext. They reference the planting of sunflowers in Fukushima to help cleanse contaminated fields and echo the powerful statements made by Chinese artist and political dissident Ai Weiwei’s with his ceramic sunflower seed husks installation at the Tate Modern earlier this year. 

His design features a traditional Cumbrian “Dabbin” cottage and several artefacts similar to those at Beatrix Potter’s house, Hill Top, such as the garden gate, the water pump at the cottage door and the stone flags. One of the boundary walls will be a Vaccary wall, much used around the Lake District and known locally as Brathay flags. They were solid enough to keep out the cows.