When Sir John Hall appointed us to create a new public rose garden on the Wynyard Hall estate, we decided from the outset that this was to be a garden where the proportion of planting would be greater than that of paths and open space. This was to be a floriferous haven in which to lose oneself.  We also took the early decision to blend roses with grasses and perennials, stretching out the season of interest with plants that also provided a foil for the roses, allowing each cultivar to be appreciated in its own space. Working with Michael Marriott during his time at David Austin Roses we selected a collection of over 3000 shrub, wild, ground cover, climbing, rambling, floribunda and old English roses that we chromatically arranged through the garden. The layout is inspired by some of the most important phases in the history of the hortus conclusus, or walled garden, including the controlled gridding and crop rotation that characterises the traditional Victorian kitchen garden with square beds arranged around central dipping ponds, the babbling rills and fountains of enclosed Islamic paradise gardens and the colonnaded walks of Roman courtyard peristyle gardens. The long axis of the garden runs almost exactly east-west, so its particularly memorable to visit in the afternoon of late summer, to catch the sun dipping behind the second blooms of the roses amongst the golden glow of grasses.