Dalemain House wins Garden of the Year 2013 Dalemain dates from the reign of Henry II, when it was the site of a fortified tower. It has been home to the family since 1679, but its gardening history predates even then. During the early 17th and late 16th centuries, the grounds were used to produce healing and culinary herbs for the house. Connections to the garden's horticultural past are everywhere: for instance a Greek fir (Abies cephalonica), planted in the 1840s by ancestor Dorothea Hasell; a gift from Joseph Banks, the plant collector who sailed on the Endeavour with Captain Cook. It is now the oldest and largest specimen in the UK, measuring 85ft high and 19ft wide. Hasell-McCosh has run the garden for 18 years, inheriting the role from her mother-in-law, Sylvia McCosh. She looked after it very well, and much of the landscaping is still the same. I've made it more accessible, by putting in paths and restructuring here and there. Growing up in the south of England, Hasell-McCosh was gardening as a child, years before she took over Dalemain. When I was a girl you could still buy plug plants in Woolworths, so I'd spend my pocket money on those. I grew raspberries and lettuce which I sold back to my mother. I've learnt things since then, of course. When I was a child I thought it was great if a lettuce bolted, because it made it so much bigger. But a big part of the fun with the garden is making mistakes and learning from them. Under the Greek fir, for example, the soil is quite dry and acidic. We tried some variegated ground elder and it didn't survive. We replaced it with some dicentra and it has thrived. I try to experiment with things, to find out what works. I've also tried to make the garden a bit more magical. I love that side of gardening: the way you plant a bulb in November and then in spring up it pops, after a cold, wet winter. I put in a box shaped like a dragon. Elsewhere I've developed other passions, such as the blue poppies, which have now been identified as a unique variety: Meconopsis grandis 'Dalemain. I was inspired by that bit in The Wizard of Oz when Dorothy is walking through the field of poppies and falls asleep. We have a large bed full of them now; they start off as a deep violet and become a lighter blue as they get older.  The garden is renowned for its fruit growing. Each year it holds the prestigious Dalemain Marmalade Awards, and has nearly 30 varieties of ancient apple trees, the fruits from which are used in the tea room and café. Elsewhere, a stumpery features a collection of 200-year-old oak stumps. The trees were felled because Hasell-McCosh's mother-in-law needed to pay for roof repairs. In 1993 she developed the children's garden, where her children could play, and where the plants were named after animals. "Life today is full of superficiality and change," says Hasell-McCosh. A garden is something that people can believe in. They can see that it's authentic, and real, and has been there for so many years. Because we live in the house, my family are as involved as I am - as the children have grown older they have become more involved in the planting. Visitors love to see something which carries on like that. It isn't a garden in a vacuum. It has a past and a future. Over the years we've tried to garden it patiently, without gimmicks. The award is a culmination of all the hard work - by my mother-in-law, by my head gardener Rose Harper, by the countless volunteers who have offered their expertise. It's a celebration of that, really. Dalemain Historic House & Gardens is open Sunday-Thursday (017684 86450). Visit Historic Houses Association