I’ve got a long list of ‘must see’ gardens but it’s a bit shorter now thanks to a Garden Media Guild trip to the Sir Harold Hillier Gardens. It’s always lovely to see gardens in a different part of the country, not least because a change in soil and climate usually means a different palette of plants.
We started our day trip with a visit to Hardy’s Cottage Garden Plants where Rob and Rosy Hardy explained how they propagate plants for their multi award-winning nursery – you can read about my previous visit here. We then headed off to the Sir Harold Hillier Garden for the afternoon.
The gardens and arboretum were begun by Sir Harold Hillier in 1953 and today have an incredible array of plants and trees with more than 12,500 different taxa. It includes 14 National Collections and more than 600 Champion Trees – the widest, tallest etc of their type in the country.
Renowned plantsman and planthunter Roy Lancaster was the first curator of the garden (you can read my review of his autobiography here) and we were lucky to have him join the afternoon tour, which was led by the current curator David Jewell. Their combined depth of knowledge was like being shown around accompanied by a plant encylopedia.
Many of the plants still thriving in the garden were introduced by Roy during his time there, including a Quercus castaneifolia grown from an acorn collected in Iran.
One tree that got the group’s cameras going was a striking magnolia with beautiful cream and red colouring, and a Cornus capita ‘Highdown’ also caused some interest.
David commented that as a group cornus “would take a lot of beating” as an ornamental tree.
Despite the important botanical nature of the Sir Harold Hillier Gardens, it’s not laid out like a curated collection but has far more of a relaxed, garden feel to it with glimpses through plants to other areas.
There are also things that are familiar garden plants, including a lovely display of different peonies illustrating the changes in flowering time and colours that breeding has brought about.
A group of wisteria growing up poles gave us all an idea for a different way of including them in gardens rather than the usual wall-trained or over an arch.
Sir Harold first planted The Centenary Border in 1964 to mark the anniversary of the founding of Hilliers Nursery by his grandfather. When David arrived 12 years ago it was badly in need of an overhaul.
“The trees at the back were almost 30 to 40ft tall and there was a lot of shade,” he told us.
Originally a series of semi-circular beds, it’s now 250m-long double borders (one of the longest in the country) with paths allowing easy access year-round.
Granite setts along the path are in blocks at intervals corresponding to the length of a cricket pitch – cricket was one of Sir Harold’s great interests.
There were several plants that caught my eye along the border’s length and there was a good mix of both pastel shades and more tropical planting.
The garden was left to Hampshire County Council in 1977 and it’s run as a charity with the remit of horticulture, conservation, education and recreation – we saw elements of all those aims on our visit.
With only an afternoon, it wasn’t possible to fully explore the whole 180 acres and in many ways we got just a taste of what the Sir Harold Hillier Gardens has to offer with the tour naturally concentrating on those parts that are best in summer. We didn’t see the celebrated Winter Garden, for example, as David advised it was in “its green phase” and he urged us to make a return visit in winter. It seems I may need to put the garden back on my ‘must see’ list.
For more information about the Sir Harold Hillier Gardens, visit the website.
You can read about more of my garden visits here.
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