A visit to Serge Hill

There are certain places that remind you why you fell in love with gardens in the first place. Serge Hill Gardens is one of them. 

We visited on a damp, mizzly day — the low light making it all feel especially lush and alive. It just so happened to be Dean’s birthday, and it felt like a perfect, quiet celebration: a place filled with life, and a deep sense of care. 

Our visit took in a series of gardens across the site — each with its own distinct charm. There’s Tom and Sue Stuart-Smith’s private garden at The Barn, with its enclosed courtyard, more formal areas of lawn and clipped hedging, a prairie garden planted from seed in 2011 and a grove of Cornus kousa. Then there’s the Plant Library, first planted in 2021, which is home to over 1,800 herbaceous perennials plus bulbs and is guided by a deliberately experimental ethos. And finally, the romance of the garden at Serge Hill itself, with its beautiful Foster and Pearson greenhouse, orderly rows of vegetables, and a joyful tangle of self-seeded annuals and perennials.

These gardens are a masterclass in structure and rhythm. There’s a sense of movement built into the layout — a natural flow that invites you to pause, to linger, and then to move on. They lead you gently, without telling you what to do.

They are not just beautifully designed — they are clearly profoundly loved and skillfully tended to. The planting is exuberant but never chaotic; combinations that seem effortless but are clearly the result of deep knowledge and care. Some highlights of our trip included the Thalictrum delavayi ‘Hewitt’s Double’ (we think!) that weaved its way through many of the beds, knitting the garden together with its fine frothiness. We also noted the bronze fennel teamed with euphorbia, alliums, and the dusky purple bracts of Acanthus mollis. In the plant library, the spires of Eremurus provided some drama. And of course, the Cornus kousa — in full flower — was a star moment in a garden full of moments.

But this isn’t only a place for garden designers to admire. The Serge Hill Project welcomes not just horticulturists but local schools and others who can benefit from time spent in the garden. It’s a place of learning, of therapy, of quiet joy.

The coffee and cake, incidentally, were also exemplary—always worth noting.

Thanks to everyone at Serge Hill for the generosity, not just in planting, but in spirit. We left feeling inspired, recharged, and very lucky to have visited.