We were delighted to give the Harold Hillier Award this year to Ellen Penstone-Smith for the wonderful restoration of the walled garden at Farringford, which has turned it into a must-visit destination for Islanders and tourists alike. Truly ‘a significant contribution to Horticulture on the Isle of Wight’ as the citation for the award states. We were also very pleased to welcome Rob Mew, former Head of Horticulture at IOW College to our AGM to make the presentation to Ellen.
Rob received the Award himself in 2005 when he was described as ‘a propagator of people entering horticulture’. Ellen is one of those he propagated! She went on to study at Wisley and Kew before building a career on the mainland but returned to the Island with her husband Alastair to take on the Farringford project. Rob described the tranformation of Farringford from the bleak bare plot that Ellen and Alastair found in 2017 to the magnificent ‘Careless order’d Garden’ inspired by Tennyson as ‘a masterclass in plant associations and plant combinations’
You can read more about the Award and past winners in our Harold Hillier Hall of Fame here