Mason Alan – TV Gardener was to the Manor borne

Alan Mason (b1952)

ALAN’S distinguished career began as Head Gardener to Mr and Mrs George Lane-Fox at Bramham Park, in Wetherby in West Yorkshire, which has one of the finest examples of a French-style garden in England.

He went on to spend nine years as Gardens Manager to the Earl and Countess of Harewood, at Harewood House, near Leeds where he improved and rejuvenated the gardens within the Capability Brown landscape to a level where they became one of the top ten most visited gardens in Britain.

In 1988 Alan and his wife Marylyn bought a 14th century manor house at Port de Roche near Langon in Brittany, France. The House came with eight and a half acres of garden, streams and woodland and it was here that they created a showpiece “English” garden, using the Best of British in horticulture to take the great British art of gardening into Europe.

The creation of this garden was the subject of two highly popular programmes made for Yorkshire Television and Channel 4, Le Manoir.

This garden has since been voted by the French as one of their top 200 favourite gardens. Following the success of these programmes Alan was asked in 1992 to present a Channel 4 series Gardens without Borders in which he took a group of amateur gardeners around some of the private gardens of France on a quest to discover whether the horticultural borders of the EU were disappearing along with the economic ones.

The series in France was followed with other series looking at the gardens of Italy, Spain, Portugal and then Holland.

Tadcaster-born Alan moved to a home in the grounds of Harlaxton Manor in 1992, where he started the restoration and development of 110 acres of garden and grounds.

The formal garden is a collection of classical European features and the six acre walled garden, probably the most ornate of its kind in Britain, if not Europe.

It was within the walled garden that Alan was able to create more plant interest which was not possible within the Manor’s classical gardens, and he designed a series of show gardens, housing collections of rare and unusual plants. This led to Alan presenting a ten part series for Central Television “Secrets from the Secret Garden” which was shown in 1997.

He then moved to Frieston, near Caythorpe where he still lives.

Much of Alan’s work today is focused on his own design business where he creates domestic gardens in the UK and sometimes Europe, working in partnership with his wife Marylyn, a former YTV Calendar presenter, until her death in 2014.

Alan also acts as a judge of the show gardens at the prestigious Sandringham Flower Show and as a garden design speaker for many groups including The Royal Horticultural Society.