RHS Garden Hyde Hall is a public display garden run by the

Royal Horticultural Society The Royal Horticultural Society (RHS), founded in 1804 as the Horticultural Society of London, is the UK's leading gardening charity. The RHS promotes horticulture through its five gardens at Wisley (Surrey), Hyde Hall (Essex), Harlow Carr (Nor ...

in the

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ide ...

county A county is a geographic region of a country used for administrative or other purposes Chambers Dictionary, L. Brookes (ed.), 2005, Chambers Harrap Publishers Ltd, Edinburgh in certain modern nations. The term is derived from the Old French ...

Essex Essex () is a county in the East of England. One of the home counties, it borders Suffolk and Cambridgeshire to the north, the North Sea to the east, Hertfordshire to the west, Kent across the estuary of the River Thames to the south, and Grea ...

. It is one of five public gardens run by the society, alongside

Wisley __NOTOC__ Wisley is a village and civil parish in Surrey, England between Cobham and Woking, in the Borough of Guildford. It is the home of the Royal Horticultural Society's Wisley Garden. The River Wey runs through the village and Ockham and ...

in Surrey, Harlow Carr in North Yorkshire, Rosemoor in Devon, and Bridgewater in Greater Manchester (opening in 2021). The 360-acre Hyde Hall site encompasses a range of garden styles, from the Dry Garden with drought resistant plants, to the Hilltop Garden with roses and herbaceous borders. Hyde Hall has had a lot of investment in recent years with the opening of a new Global Growth Vegetable Garden (in 2017) showing vegetables from around the world, a new Winter Garden (in 2018) hosting an RHS Trial of

Cornus ''Cornus'' is a genus of about 30–60 species of woody plants in the family Cornaceae, commonly known as dogwoods, which can generally be distinguished by their blossoms, berries, and distinctive bark. Most are deciduous trees or shrub ...

, a new Welcome building (in 2017), and Hilltop Complex (in 2018) featuring a new restaurant and activity centre. There is a reference library, located in the old farmhouse. It provides a substantial collection of books on practical gardening, garden design, botanical art, garden history, wildlife gardening, plant hunting and much more. Robert Brett is the current curator after taking over from Ian Le Gros who became Head of Site.

History

The garden at Hyde Hall was created by Dr and Mrs Robinson in 1955. Hyde Hall was formerly a working farm on a hilltop surrounded by arable land. The site was cleared and 60 trees purchased from

Wickford Wickford is a town and civil parish in the south of the English county of Essex, with a population of 33,486. Located approximately 30 miles (50 km) east of London, it is within the Borough of Basildon along with the original town of Basil ...

market a few miles away. These trees now form the Woodland Garden. In the 1960s shelter belts of Lawson and Leyland cypress hedges were planted. During this decade the farmland to the west of the Hyde Hall hilltop was incorporated into the garden. In 1976 Helen and Dick Robinson formed the Hyde Hall Garden Trust which would manage the garden on a long-term basis. The trust donated Hyde Hall to the Royal Horticultural Society in 1993.

Sources

*Elliott, Brent (2004). ''The Royal Horticultural Society: A History 1804–2004.'' Phillimore.

External links

Official website
{{Royal Horticultural Society

Hyde Hall Hyde Hall is a US neoclassical country mansion designed by architect Philip Hooker for George Clarke (1768–1835), a wealthy landowner. The house was constructed between 1817 and 1834, and designed with English and American architectural featu ...

Botanical gardens in England Gardens in Essex Woodland gardens