Reflecting on 2025

Before we hear from the teams, James Madge, Garden Manager at The Laskett, would like to share a message on behalf of all the gardens:

We’d like to thank all our visitors for taking the time to visit our beautiful gardens and in turn supporting a great charity.

Currently there is an ever-growing need for Perennial’s services, therefore your support is essential. Whether you make a donation, join us on an Exclusive Garden Tour or buy our Christmas cards and gifts, your contribution enables Perennial to continue the work we do to support  everyone facing challenges  in the horticultural community.

With your continued support, Perennial can help to build better futures for all those working in horticulture and their families.

If I can urge you to do anything, please look at Perennial’s services and see what we can do to help you or someone you know. Our services include tailored one-to-one advice for people facing financial, health, career or complex life challenges such as bereavement or homelessness. The charity also provides early-intervention wellbeing support, training and resources to help individuals and workplaces prevent problems before they escalate. The Services team really care about each person they help; no one is alone. perennial.org.uk

2025 at Fullers Mill Garden from Annie Dellbridge

We started the year celebrating our snowdrops, focussing on 10 varieties which have been named to commemorate famous ‘galanthophiles’, garden owners or loved ones.

Much of the rest of 2025 has been defined by the dry weather in East Anglia, often compared to the summer of 1976 by our visitors with weeks without significant rainfall and clear blue skies. This meant that planned new planting within the garden was delayed until the autumn rains and cooler days.

In June we hosted the launch of ‘Fullers Mill Garden – A Jewel in The Forest’, a book full of fantastic botanical illustrations of the plants at the garden undertaken by members of the Iceni Botanical Artists Group with text from Rod Leeds.

We have welcomed many new visitors to the garden who attended our series of photography workshops with Phil Morley and botanical art courses with Reinhild Raistrick throughout the year.

Our colchicum days in September were a great success with many visitors seeing the large range of these beautiful flowering bulbs amongst the early autumn colours within the garden.

Now we are in winter, most of the leaves have fallen from the trees, showing the stunning structures of their branches reflected in the river and millpond, further enhanced by the early morning hoarfrosts.

Roundup and highlights from James Madge at The Laskett Garden

This year really proved to be a ‘hot Laskett summer’ and the garden volunteers could see the benefit of their hard graft from the winter of 2024 and spring of 2025, the importance of the bed work we carried out in the Serpentine and other herbaceous areas being obvious.

Although we were in a hose pipe ban, the gardens still held up well and we will continue to look to the future development of planting schemes that will adapt to the changing climate in the UK.

James’ personal highlight:
My highlight for this year was the recognition of Sir Roy Strong’s 90th birthday where we brought music back into the garden. It had been a goal I’d wanted to achieve since joining Perennial in 2022 – it’s such a perfect setting. We will be bringing more of this type of activity to The Laskett in the future. I also want to personally thank Izzy Inman, our cellist, who really understood how we wanted to mark this special occasion and got stuck into the challenge.

h.Art was such a success, welcoming our biggest visitor numbers since joining as a venue. We are looking for exhibitors for September 2026 so if you are interested in being involved, please email thelaskett@perennial.org.uk.

2026 will hold many new challenges, I’m sure, for us all, but Helen, Shane, Louisa and myself will be here with our merry Lasketteers – without them I’m not sure where I would have been this year!

Highlights from Sian Allen, Trainee Gardener at York Gate

As has become the norm in recent years we brought our snowdrop weeks forward to early February – a reflection of the milder winters we have become accustomed to. We saw a flurry of activity in the garden during these weeks and were pleased to introduce some new varieties of snowdrop – ‘Jack by the Hedge’ and ‘Rosemary Burnham.’

The introduction of a new gardener role to the team meant we have had more hands on deck since spring. We have established our new garden team and been able to achieve a lot more generally across the garden and nursery.

The incredibly dry and hot growing season in Yorkshire made it difficult to establish new plants. Throughout the garden the perennials came back considerably smaller than last year. The positive side of the unusually hot weather was that our Sand Garden looked the best it ever has, featuring borders filled with cacti which thrived. We even featured on the local news with our climate-resilient planting!

An additional news appearance came in late summer, due to the threat of the American signal crayfish plague. We hosted native crayfish in our woodland area; these have done well in the protection of York Gate. Some have been rehomed already to a designated local reservoir; the juveniles will stay at York Gate until they are mature enough to be rehomed.

A team of conservation volunteers joined us throughout summer to control the Himalayan balsam growth in the marshy woodland area just beyond the garden. This emerging area is gradually taking shape, and, in time, we look forward to expanding the garden to incorporate a more naturalistic woodland area and wildlife habitat.

The Herb Garden was redesigned in winter to reflect the Spencers’ original planting choices. We reverted from the medicinal herbal plants to traditional culinary herbs. The borders were finished with a golden gravel mulch to contrast and offset the plants. We are all really pleased with how it’s turned out.



As we look to 2026, we will be opening our gardens in February for our snowdrop and early spring flower days, followed by workshops and events in the gardens.

We look forward to welcoming you and your visit will enable us to support even more people working in horticulture and their families.