The Hidden Gardens — Kailyard Herbs

Tucked behind the Tramway in Glasgow’s Southside, The Hidden Gardens is a city sanctuary garden. City Sanctuary, two words you wouldn’t usually put together, but a sanctuary within the busy city it is.

Within The HIdden Gardens, you’ll find a rich tapestry of garden habitats, all carefully crafted and tenderly cared for.

As well as woodland areas and flower borders, there are many areas to delight the botanical senses of herb and kitchen gardeners. A potager, herb border, medicinal courtyard, mint border and wall-trained fruit trees are among the edible or medicinal planting designs.

Medicinal courtyard

This is the part of the garden that holds my heart. Within a walled courtyard, remnants of the old tramway works are visible in the old brick walls, which now add warmth and texture to this intimate garden.

Within the clay-brick bones, is a garden fleshed out with plants with traditional or contemporary medicinal significance.

In 2018, thanks to Heritage Lottery funding, The Hidden Gardens team and a group of local volunteers came together to learn about medicinal herbs and turn the courtyard into a herbal haven.

Raised beds, built on the old tramworks’ concrete floors, Pots are packed with succulents, thyme and alpine flowers.

As well as the Medicinal Courtyard, there is an impressive herb border filled with aromatic herbs like chives and lavender. Alongside the bee and butterfly border, there is a mint border. In high summer, this border hums as bees, hoverflies and other pollinators flock around the aromatic mint flowers. Pineapple, ginger, chocolate, and catmint, they pack several species into this

Pot marigolds, yarrow, borage and fennel in 2018

Plant highlights:

Marshmallow
Himalayan valerian
Apothecaries Rose
Honeysuckle
Yarrow
Butcher’s broom
Thyme
Lavender
Anise hyssop
Fig tree
Fennel

Where

Located at 25a Albert Drive, behind the Tramway, in Glasgow’s southside, and only a five-minute walk to Pollockshields train station.

Website: www.thehiddengardens.org.uk

A personal journey

Fresh from completing a Certificate in Herbology with RBGE, and working as a garden assistant at The Hidden Gardens, I was blessed to work on the medicinal courtyard creation project. Learning from head gardener Paula, the local people who volunteered their time, and medicinal herbalist Anna from Floramedica, who delivered workshops as part of the process, this was my dream job as a new gardener.

It lit a fire in me for sharing the craft of growing herbs in our Scottish climate and sharing that with other people.