The garden

“My biggest concern was when Pat Gosling said to me ‘I think you should start the garden’; I thought where do I start?”

Margaret Farrow was put in charge of the hospice garden.

I was involved from the very first because Dr Hall went to the original meeting and came back and told me about it and we started fundraising and then of course as soon as we got to the flattening stage, Pat Gosling said to me ‘someone’s got to be in charge of the garden – we’ll design a hospice and then we’ve got to do a garden’. He said ‘you’ll have to do that’.

Elizabeth Hall and I worked together when I was a nurse. I did my health visiting training but by the time I met Elizabeth I was a family planning nurse training other nurses. We worked in clinics in Colchester.

When Elizabeth told me about the hospice idea, I thought it was wonderful. I think most people did because the local councillors were so enthusiastic. I’d never had anything to do with local councillors before but people like Mary Fairhead, they were so supportive that I think we just got going. Apart from fundraising I didn’t do much until the actual building was built because they had separate committees for building and staffing and finding matrons.

I remember seeing Myland Hall for the first time. I don’t think that concerned me, I thought it was a lovely site for a hospice, my biggest concern was when Pat Gosling said to me ‘I think you should start the garden’; I thought where do I start? The pond was my biggest worry and it was absolute miracle because the pond froze hard, the winter was incredibly cold, absolute solid ice. When Pat Gosling asked me to take on the garden I said to my husband what do you think and he said ‘well you can’t garden like that!’ I said if I do it will you promise to support me and he said ‘well you know the answer to that’. So two things happened; he came with machinery and lifted all the debris from the pond. It was nothing but debris, it was muddy water. He got this machine and drenched it completely. There was a beautiful willow tree but it had to go. It was too big to be left. Then we got as far as dredging the pond and we were left with a huge area.

Mr Gosling was an exceptional man. He was so thoughtful and he was a kind person and he knew how to pick the right people. We had superb committee members.

So the pond was done. When I felt depressed about it because I thought I don’t know where to start, and my husband John did that first job, that lifted me and he said ‘we’ll just have to use people we know’. So lovely farmers came and from this produced that. Farmers Peter Rix and Andrew Davidson ploughed it, levelled it, seeded it. You just had to say you needed something and word spread around us. It really was a group of volunteers that got everything going.

When the plans were drawn up they produced a conservatory, they also produced an aviary with birds in. It meant we as gardeners were responsible for this aviary and someone had got to come along and clean it out, feed them, and fortunately a lovely lad called Pam Ryan said she would do the birds. So that was solved. I had lots of contact with a superb gardener called Jim and he came and put marvellous plants in the conservatory.

The first royal visitor we had was the duchess of Norfolk and she knew I was probably going to look after the garden and she said ‘get a load of sheep in, they’ll eat it down for you’. The farmer said to me ‘if you want to be up all the time chasing sheep!’

We had to start with having some rose beds, there were people that had been so enthusiastic about the hospice who’d left us roses in their will, named roses.

We had droughts, hurricanes, freezing weather. We had all sorts of problems in the outside. The garden changed all the time and we had to accept that. It was quite hard to accept what one had designed at the beginning lasted months, years, and everything altered as it was extended.

Angela d'Angibou was asked to help with the Myland Hall garden because of her family connection to the house.

Click here to listen to an audio recording of Angela

Angela d'Angibau transcript

I'm Angela d’Angibau and my grandmother Isabel Impey was given this house, Myland Hall, by her father in 1910 when she moved down with her husband and, I think four children, from Birmingham. My father was actually born up in Birmingham and so he moved here when he was two and then after that there were twins born and another son. So I was coming here from the time I was born right up ‘til 1972 when the house was taken by, I think Keir French bought it. There was a compulsory purchase on the house because it was owned by Colchester Borough Council so they knew it was going, they had no choice.

So I've had many happy memories of here because you know, the war was on. My sister reminded me, we sat through a bombing raid with my grandmother downstairs and she read aloud. She was very good at reading aloud so she kept my sister and I amused by reading aloud to us.
The Americans in those days, maybe nobody remembers that, I didn't remember that, were stationed in East Woods. They were hidden under the trees in East Woods and they used to come in and out of I think it was Langham airfield and so the Germans got to hear of this and they would bomb it, they were trying to bomb […]. I mean luckily we were alright, nothing was bombed actually here but it must have been quite exciting times, but luckily I don't remember that bit of it.

I didn't live that far away anyway, so we managed to have enough petrol to get here, obviously.
We used to skate on the pond because we used to have colder winters. My aunt was a very keen skater and she had music and we used to skate on the pond and play in the garden, play tennis down on the court, which is now part of the Hospice itself. I think it's probably where the Education Centre is.
My father farmed from about 1957 until the farm was taken over. So there was quite a big gap before the Hospice came here because they didn't know what to do with the house. They thought they were going to pull it down and build over it like everything else, but then they found of course it was listed.
Because I came, I must have started in ‘85. I mean the Hospice wasn't open then and that's when I started gardening.

It was a very spacious house. There were always lots of us around. It was a very happy house, a very busy house. They had cows. So in the war we always had milk and butter and cream as well so we were very lucky and a very productive garden because the vegetable garden, that’s all gone, but it was a huge vegetable garden and a huge garden in fact. Mulberries and quinces and everything you wanted was in this garden, ‘cause they were all very keen, my grandmother was very keen, but she always seemed old. You know, she was a Victorian, so she always seemed old. But her daughters who lived with her were very keen gardeners.

Margaret Farrow got in touch with me, I hadn't met her before, but she got in touch with me because she knew I'd got these family connections and asked me if I'd like to do a border and because it was a big family she thought I'd like a big border.

So I decided with my younger sister, 'cause she's very keen on gardening, and I wrote to all my relations, Impey relations, and they would donate a bit of money and then my local garden centre gave me each plant for a pound and so we did really well with that and then my husband and sons came over with all the equipment and we dug up the border. I've got pictures of us all working on the border and then we planted it. They helped me plant it so we were ready when the Queen Mother opened it. I've got pictures of all of my sons and I sort of hoeing and cleaning it up so that it would look tidy when she arrived.