In this month’s edition of The Garden (the RHS members’ magazine), the featured site for the East Midlands was a place called Hill Close Gardens in Warwick. It isn’t quite on our doorstep but not too far away and so we decided to take a trip across today:

The site is unique as the only remaining example in the UK of a series of private gardens that weren’t connected to their owner’s dwellings. Allotments are similar but are rented in order to cultivate edible plants. While many of the Hill Close gardens did include fruit, veg and even space for pigs or chickens, some were simply lawns with flower beds. You would expect something like that to be connected to a house but perhaps it makes sense that, if your city house or apartment doesn’t have space for a garden, you might want to rent or buy one else where?

By the late 20th century, these had mainly fallen into disuse and the site was set to be sold to developers for more housing but the sole remaining tenant managed to enlist the support of heritage organisations and, over the last 30 years, these legacies of the Victorian era have been restored to preserve a green oasis in the city and what otherwise might have been a forgotten part of our horticultural heritage.

They aren’t as extensive or as well labelled as some of the other gardens we get access to as members of the RHS but they were worth a visit and we might find our way back there in future.