The Walled Garden at Hillsborough Castle

Gardening has always been a passion of mine since a very young age. I've always been really interested in being stuck in the garden outdoors. My first job in gardening whenever I left college was working in the grounds at Hillsborough Castle. So I worked here for two years before progressing on to this current role as keeper of the Walled Garden. The Walled Garden forms part of the 100 acre site at Hillsborough Castle. We have a small team of gardeners of approximately 78 people and they are mixed between the Walled Garden and the grounds. This garden is not a restoration of the original garden here which was built in the 18th century but it is in fact a reimagination of how the layout was and the paths and how it was worked hundreds of years ago. So it's nice for us to be able to use methods which they would have used but also bring in our new and modern techniques. We want to incorporate growing methods such as using straw to keep the strawberries from sitting on the soil instead of using membrane which would maybe be more common now. We want to introduce crops that people have never seen or people see here and ask questions about them and go home and grow them themselves. An interesting point of this Walled Garden is spallier fruit trees, the apple and pear trees that are growing around the surrounding wall of this garden. They have been planted maybe 50 to 60 years ago and they're just producing masses of fruit which is brilliant to have them still retained in this garden while we're introducing so many new crops. The help of the Hampden Court gardeners gave us a real head start. It was brilliant to get the opportunity to work along with these gardeners and they shared their tips of how they do certain tasks and jobs over in Hampden Court and we were able to learn from them and also they were able to learn from us. The hard work and determination of all the gardeners here at Hellsborough Castle has been brilliant and it's just been great to see how the garden has developed and they've enjoyed seeing each stage as it progresses. It's just going to be such a brilliant such a brilliant spot which will create such a lovely entrance into the grounds at Hellsborough Castle.