Huddersfield Daily Examiner Article

Push open a wooden gate and high above the Pennines, surrounded by moorland, is a delightful garden with a combination of water and stone that signals a Japanese influence.’ It is the last thing you would expect to find 900 feet up in the Pennines at the edge of open moor land.

I'd bought a little cottage and with it came some garden. I was determined to grow my own vegetables. I was double digging when I came across this stone. When I opened it up it was a culvert so I had water running through my garden and so it became a water garden.

But as you climb the stairs to James Gallagher’s garden watched by inquisitive sheep from neighbouring fields, the sound of water gets your senses alert. For here, invisible to the busy road below, is a delightful garden, overflowing with surprises – the biggest of them all is its Japanese influence. The phrase double-digging, enough to drive fear into any half hearted gardener, was to provide him with unexpected inspiration...

It proves to be a massive understatement. Working in holidays and any spare time, James spent more than four years creating a stunning garden. Quiz James about how he made what had been a wilderness look so natural and you realise the answer is sheer hard work and an insistence on getting things right.

I began looking more at how the Japanese do water and rock gardens. Their gardens are a copy of nature, a stylisation of nature. Very few people in this country get it right.

A close look at the stonework makes it more astounding still. Each piece has been individually chosen for size and shape, each stone positioned with such care that even in the stone bridge, there is not a sliver of cement to be seen. One Marsden couple have already asked him to help redesign part of their garden. James hopes it is the first of many gardening commissions. He is looking to the future and a fresh start as a gardening specialist.