Garden TOUR
Once an old quarry, the garden of Hedgehog Hall is now a haven for nature and wildlife – and all done organically
It was while on a visit to King Charles’ pioneering organic garden at Highgrove, Gloucestershire, that Janet Rowe had a lightbulb moment.
As she walked through the lush meadows, teeming with wildlife and carefully maintained without a single chemical, she suddenly thought: “I can do this.” And she did. With the help of her husband Andrew, over the past 23 years they have organically managed the half-acre garden of their home, Hedgehog Hall, which sits in a sheltered former sand and gravel quarry, in the county of Leicestershire.
For more than two decades the couple has been improving the soil to the point where it, too, is now a haven for wildlife and there isn’t a slug pellet in sight.
“There’s simply no need,” Janet explains. “All my hostas – of which there are more than 100 – stand in trays of water from May. In June, I give them a dose of nematodes and they are flourishing.”
At 700ft above sea level, creating this spectacular garden has been a challenge. The shifting sandy soil ridge that the property sits within is so steep, it was too dangerous to bring in a digger to do the hard landscaping.
Instead, Andrew spent four years creating the ironstone walled terraces by hand. It was quite a feat – but well worth the challenge in order to showcase Janet’s spectacular collection of snowdrops.
She explains: “A friend of mine was heavily involved with snowdrops and I’d always wondered what they saw in them.
“About 15 years ago or so she gave me some and as I watched t
