Garden designer Brian Roberts has won an award for an amazing garden inspired by Wuthering Heights and the moorland landscapes of Brontë country.

Brian, who runs Patterned Earth in Netherton, took a little piece of Yorkshire to the prestigious Belvoir Castle Flower & Garden Show in Leicestershire.

His show garden called Weathering Heights won the Duchess of Rutland Cup after being named winner of the show’s Border Competition.

The garden took its inspiration from the exposed landscapes of the Yorkshire uplands: dry-stone walls, moorland planting and the way plants and wildlife respond to sometimes unforgiving conditions.

At its heart is a dry-stone wall that creates contrasting microclimates, with cooler, shaded and more sheltered conditions on one side and warmer, nectar-rich planting on the other. Gaps within the wall allow insects and other wildlife to move through the garden.

Brian said: “I wanted to take a little piece of the landscape I know and love in Yorkshire to Belvoir.

“The moors, dry-stone walls and plants that somehow thrive in quite unforgiving conditions have always fascinated me.

“Weathering Heights was a playful nod to Wuthering Heights, of course, but the ‘weathering’ was important too.

“The garden was really about how landscapes, plants and wildlife respond and adapt to the conditions around them.”

The garden was personally judged by television gardener David Domoney, head judge at the show, who announced the award; BBC Gardeners’ World presenter Adam Frost; and Belvoir Castle head gardener and show organiser Andy Tudbury.

The garden’s dry-stone wall was built by Meltham-based dry-stone waller Richard Clegg, a multiple Chelsea Flower Show award winner.

Brian had an unusual path into garden design. After a career in health and social care, latterly leading major NHS digital and data-science programmes, he pursued his lifelong interest in plants, gardens and landscape by retraining professionally in garden design and horticulture.

He achieved distinctions in both his Garden Design Diploma at the Yorkshire School of Garden Design and his RHS horticultural studies.

In 2026, Brian was named a finalist in the Large Domestic Garden Award in the Student Design category at the national Society of Garden + Landscape Designers Awards.

Brian added: “Gardens and plants have been part of my life for as long as I can remember. I’ve always been fascinated by the effect that being in a garden or landscape can have on how we feel — there’s something enormously restorative about being connected to nature.

“After a working life in health and social care, I increasingly felt myself being pulled in that direction.

“I certainly didn’t imagine that not long after retraining I’d become a finalist in the national SGLD awards and then be standing at Belvoir holding the Duchess of Rutland Cup. It’s been quite a journey.”

Despite the apparent contrast between his two careers, Brian sees a common thread between them.

“On the surface, healthcare and garden design seem worlds apart, but both ultimately start with people and their wellbeing.

“When I begin a garden, I spend time getting to know the people who will live there — their wishes, the way they want to use the space and what matters to them — and then I read the landscape and look for the connections between the two.

“The aim is to create what we call a ‘somewhere garden’: something that could only really belong to those people and to where they live.”