The man who has greatly influenced me throughout my professional life as a garden designer is Thomas Hayton Mawson (1861-1933). Mawson was the leading designer of his day, designing large country house gardens nation and worldwide.

Born in Scorton, a lovely village close to Lancaster, the family moved to London before settling in the Lake District in 1884, setting up a nurserybusiness in Windermere (Lakeland Nurseries) with his two brothers.

His first major commission was Graythwaite Hall, Sawrey. A typical Arts and Crafts garden, six acres with a rose garden, terraces,yew hedges and nice plantings. Many more notable designs were commissioned in the following years. Mawson laid out the five acres of formal gardens at Brockhole (Windermere, Cumbria), The National Parks Visitor Center in 1900.

In 1900 Thomas Mawson published one of the finest books in print on the subject of garden design. The Art and Craft of Garden Making gave a name to the garden style used by two contemporaries of his, Gertrude Jekyll and Edwin Luytens. This was one of the first books to be illustrated throughout with photographs.

My own first contact with Mawsons work came at Stanley Park, Blackpool. Growing up as a youngster in Blackpool, I spent many a happy year running around and playing in 'The Park'. It was only when my interest in horticulture developed that I came to appreciate Mawsons work. Stanley Park has a boundry of 2½ miles, with 22 acres of informal lake styled in the Brownian tradition, large classical Italian garden, terraces down to the lakeside with a neo-classical bandstand. Designed in 1921 (opened 1926) by the firm of Thomas Mawson and Sons, the majority of the work done by his son Edward Prentice Mawson.

Thomas Mawson died in 1933 at Hest Bank, near Lancaster, aged 72. The company of Thomas H Mawson and Sons closed in the early 1980s