Secret Gardens: Springfield

I've discovered a whole load of new secret gardens recently, these include the quaint and floral Ada Salter Rose Garden, the quiet and interesting Albin Memorial Garden and the most beautiful, right at my doorstep, the Gillian Webb Memorial Gardens in Springfield. Everything about the Gillian Webb Memorial Garden was magic- the greenhouses, the flowers, the haunting beautiful music and the haunting beautiful people.

I stumbled across it one afternoon, I met Eve and Eve plucked off a lettuce and gave it to me. more info on the gardens below (from the Open Squares website)

 

 

 

This beautiful 2.5-acre walled garden, set within the grounds of Springfield University Hospital, maintains a strong link with its historic past in both planting and function. 

The project is based in the Gillian Webb Memorial Garden, which was once the Male Airing Court in the days when Springfield was the Surrey County Pauper Lunatic Asylum. In 1841, the space was laid out with vegetable plots maintained by the patients. 

Today Share, a charity that provides training and employment support for disabled adults, uses the space as a hub for its thriving horticultural training project. The site includes a number of polytunnels and a glasshouse, which trainees use all year round to produce bedding plants, food crops and decorative plants to use in Share's kitchen or for sale.