In 2020 horticulturalist Nigel Dunnett was commissioned to design a new layout for the garden at Hospitalfield, an artist residency site in Arbroath, Scotland, to tell 800 years of the garden’s history.

Jane worked on the planting of the design with Nigel and a team of volunteers. Committed to ‘naturalistic planting,’ Dunnett is internationally renowned for his dramatic naturalistic planting design.

In November 2022 Jane returned to the garden to lead a week-long project with a group of volunteers in the ground preparation and sowing of a perennial meadow as the final stage in implementing Nigel Dunnett’s design. Four quadrants were sown with three Pictorial Meadows seed mixes that were selected for suitability to the site and areas for cut flower growing. The meadow will be maintained by the garden volunteers and will develop over the coming years.

The distinctive double Walled Garden creates a microclimate, the mild coastal weather combined with the warming walls makes visitors feel as though they have walked into a faraway place. It is rare to have a walled garden where the grand house is the 4th wall of the garden. This is because the 19th century house is laid out on the old medieval plan of the hospital where presumably the monks wished to be as close as they could be to their productive and medicinal gardens.

The photographs used throughout this site and below were taken by Bryony McIntyre while she was on an artist residency at Hospitalfield during the time the meadow was sown. They overlap the house and gardens to create images that evoke the feel of the site.