Hilldrop Garden - a garden to reflect upon

A couple of days after my visit to the Manor House, Upton Grey, I was on the road again this time heading for Hilldrop Garden in Essex, the garden of John Little.  This visit was organised by the Garden Media Guild, of which I may have mentioned before, I am a proud member.

I don't actually know where to start in describing this garden.  It is stunningly beautiful, full of wildflowers of all different shapes, sizes and absolutely buzzing with life.

I was delighted to see so many teasels.  A must-grow plant for wildlife in my garden.  But I need to stop and pause before launching into how beautiful the garden is because, whilst obviously important, it is not the total point of the garden.  There is far more to think about.

This garden is a living demonstration about the importance of conditions required to encourage invertebrates.  John talked to us about how you need to provide diverse substrate to encourage the widest diversity of invertebates: bees, wasps, flies, beetles etc.  Interestingly important sites are where a 'mosaic' of substrates can be found are on brownfield sites.  As these previous industrial sites fall into dereliction and decay they can provide ideal habitats for a huge range of insects, birds and more.  

We walked around the garden being shown different substrates in action, such as piles of sand where small wasps were nesting.  This explained to me why most year I have small wasps nesting in the grassy knoll by the side of my pond.  

Seashells are being trialled as a growing medium.  They are probably quite salty still, John told us, which is why the sea kale is enjoying it so much.

We looked at compacted earth towers that also encourage nesting insects.

and dead trees, made safe and left in situ.  These are great habitats.

Of course there was also water, which is vital to a diverse habitat.

and I loved these planters (would this be called a gabion?) made up of smallish rocks and stones.  Not only are these elements providing habitats they are also reusing waste and they look beautiful: win win win.

Waste was being recycled around the garden to create habitats; this is both functional ....

and beautiful.  The garden was almost completely direct-sown.  It does need some management as, similar to mine, the brambles want to take over and also so do self-sown trees.  

Gnome down!  (I was so glad to see a gnome).

I loved the grilled paths, which enable drainage and also enable growth.

Did I mention it was beautiful,

really beautiful.  Can you the shopping trolley on the edge of the pond?  This was deliberately sited there and moorhens have been nesting on it.  How cool is that and it is evidencing the point that waste can have function.  

There are workshops that take place at Hilldrop to learn skills that create new habitats.  These are run by Care Not Capital, a collaboration between John and Susanna Grant.  They aim to train gardeners in 'almost everything except horticulture'.  Training gardeners to think about creating more diverse habitats and making spaces that work for people and for wildlife.  

I found this fascinating and also recognised how important this is.  As the moment many of our open spaces are 'gardened' for easy management rather than making spaces that can still be easy to manage, but are less mowing grass and more about creating diverse spaces.  

It is a project John is passionate about, so much he wears it.  No, the QR will not work from this photo, I did not try to make it work but you can go to the website here.

John also owns the Grass Roof Company, putting his beliefs into functional action.  I found wandering around the websites inspirational.

I found the visit to the garden inspirational and thought provoking.  I try in my garden to be wildlife friendly: I have some piles of dead wood, I have the area of the garden I call the Wild Garden that is pretty much left to fend for itself and only mowed a couple of times in the Autumn.  Yet I wandered around this garden knowing I could and should be doing more.  

My thoughts are still forming and whilst it might seem incongruous, the visit I made in the same week to the Manor at Upton Grey is very much in the mix.  Studies have taken place at Great Dixter auditing the diversity of invertebrates and wildlife in the garden and there is also the seminal work undertaken by Jennifer  Owen* where she undertook a thirty year study of the wildlife in her Leicester garden.  These studies and others like them are important as they show us that in our own spaces we can create beautiful gardens that add value to wildlife.  It is worth noting that Jennifer's garden is a suburban garden 2km outside of the city and based on a busy road.  The garden is approx 741square metres, so not massive.  My garden visits in this week made me pause to reflect. These two gardens who are very different in style were both doing their bit for supporting nature.  I have a lot of thinking to do: I am not there yet, but watch this space.

Hilldrop does open to the public a couple of times a year: information can be found on the website

Take care and be kind.

For more from the Blackberry Garden follow me on Bluesky Twitter X  Facebook Instagram and Substack 

* Jennifer Owen Wildlife of a Garden a thirty year study Royal Horticultural Society 2010