From its iconic Dry Garden to exciting new features, our Essex garden goes from strength to strength. From its iconic Dry Garden to exciting new features, our Essex garden goes from strength to strength.

View the map

Back

Winter Garden and Millennium Avenue

At the bottom of Clover Hill, the vast Winter Garden is a showcase of the extraordinary colours, textures and scents of plants in winter.

Looking its best in...

Winter Radiant stems, skeletal seedheads, glossy berries and wonderful fragrance
Summer Drifts of grasses and flowering perennials, set against a rich backdrop of trees and shrubs

Celebrate the delights of winter

The Winter Garden is filled with trees, shrubs, herbaceous plants and bulbs that peak in interest in the coldest months – there are plants with peeling bark, glowing stems, shining berries and sculptural seedheads.

Groupings of Acer, Malus, Edgeworthia, Prunus, Salix, Hamamelis, Ginkgo, Viburnum, Ilex, Callicarpa and Cornus add colour and texture to gloomy winter days and many of these plants produce fantastic scents that carry on the breeze.

Acting as an exclamation mark at the end of the garden, is a view towards one of Hyde Hall's most beautiful trees, Fraxinus angustifolia ‘Raywood’ – best enjoyed in autumn when its leaves are alight with vivid, deep red tones.

A trilogy of sculptures

Sculpture is also important at Hyde Hall, with pieces positioned throughout the Winter Garden. Look out for the three sculptures of a decaying leaf created by David Watkinson, which depict the different stages of a leaf’s decomposition and highlight the natural cycle of life, decay and renewal. A kinetic seed sculpture by David can also be found on Millennium Avenue.

Through the autumn and winter months, living willow sculptures can be viewed in the garden – created annually by the garden team from coppiced Salix.

Millennium Avenue

Envisaged in the original RHS masterplan for Hyde Hall, was a stately boulevard of oak (Quercus frainetto ‘Hungarian Crown’) and ash (Fraxinus excelsior ‘Westhof’s Glorie’) running from east to west – pictured here as the Winter Garden was being planted. Keeping the oak trees healthy has proved challenging, although the ash trees have flourished. A copper beech sits where the avenue tapers out into a vista that takes you to the Coronation Meadow, where an English oak has been planted to commemorate the King and Queen’s coronation.

Plants in the Winter Garden

You may also be interested in...

Read more about selecting, planting and caring for Cornus

Find out more about the Award of Garden Merit (AGM) »

Get involved

The Royal Horticultural Society is the UK’s leading gardening charity. We aim to enrich everyone’s life through plants, and make the UK a greener and more beautiful place.