RHS Hyde Hall Renaissance

It’s three years since I last visited Hyde Hall and my goodness, what a transformation. A cluster of good looking new buildings perches on the hilltop, providing an enclosed teaching garden with classrooms, a large hall for meetings and conferences and a spacious restaurant (there’s another one at the entrance). The previously rather tired vegetable garden has been replaced with the World Garden where they are experimenting with growing all manner of unusual crops outside and inside the impressive octagonal glasshouse. The circular design by Xa Tollemache radiates from the glasshouse making it both practical and great to look at.

But it was another part of the garden that really blew me away – the Sky Meadow – part European steppe planting, part American prairie and part South African veldt the hillside features an ever-changing display of flowers. At the moment oenothera, penstemon, monarda and oxeye daisies are in the ascendant but it will keep on giving right through until autumn. Its brilliant – sadly not something I could replicate even on a small scale in my shady garden.

This may be the driest part of the country, but somehow my visit managed to coincide with rain so my apologies that the photos don’t sparkle as much as I would like them to.