Quiet Garden Takes Root in St Bride’s Churchyard

St Bride’s is an oasis of both calm and community for Fleet Street and the surrounding City of London.

Our churchyard garden is enjoyed by countless people who may come for a moment of quiet or to meet friends, finish a coffee or eat their lunch beneath the protection of the great London plane trees.

The garden is currently being rejuvenated under the leadership and expertise of Valerie Hill-Archer, a long-time member of our congregation and dedicated gardener (who previously won a Silver Gilt award in The London Squares Garden Competition).

Valerie’s goal is to establish a garden in line with the ethos of the Quiet Garden Movement which was founded in 1992 by The Revd Philip Roderick.

The movement has now grown into a global network of gardens and outdoor spaces in both rural and urban areas, offering places for prayer, reflection, stillness, and rest to nurture spiritual, mental, and physical well-being for individuals and communities.

Valerie and the team at St Bride’s consulted with the City of London Corporation and then secured sponsorship from two companies working locally, Mace and Keltbray. Both are currently engaged in the substantial redevelopment of Salisbury Square next to St Bride’s which will create a new “Justice Quarter” in the City of London.

Valerie collaborated closely with her friend Mark Lane, former Head Gardener at Buckingham Palace, who advised and helped her realise her vision for the garden. The scheme uses trees and shrubs to create a surrounding green screen to both baffle and shield visitors from the busy adjacent streets.

The understory planting adds to the sense of peaceful tranquillity with scented plants and a colour palette of mostly white and pastel shades. (For the keen gardeners there is a full list of the planting below.)

Last month, Valerie and a team of volunteers began work, first lifting and storing many of the small plants that were already in the garden. The beds were then cleared and top soil dug in before the new planting was set out.

The scheme is designed to survive in a difficult environment and should require little maintenance.

We look forward to the plants settling in this Spring and growing into the realisation of Valerie’s vision of the churchyard as a place of peaceful, quiet, calm for all.

Our thanks to her, Mark Lane, our sponsors and volunteers.

“One is nearer God’s heart in a garden
than anywhere else on earth.” – Dorothy Frances Gurney

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Plant List

Raised beds adjacent to the north gates

• Hakonechloa macra – edging the walls
• Taxus
• Pittosporum tenufolium ‘Gold Star’
• Sarcococca ‘Dragons Gate’
• Osmanthus x burkwoodii
• Cornus Mas ‘Varigata’
• Betula pendula Tristis
• Daphne bhulua ‘Jaqueline Postill’
• Ferns – Dryopteris affinis & Polystichum sitifernum ‘Herrenhausen’
• Thallictrum ‘Nimbus White’
• Helleborus orientalis
• Pulmonaria officinalis ‘Sissinghurst White’

Tree Pit

• Cornus ‘Norman Hadden’ underplanted with Liriope

Long Borders

• Taxus
• Rosa ‘Kew Gardens’
• Geranium x cantabrigiense ‘Bio Kovo’
• Epimedium grandiflorum ‘White Queen’
• Libertia grandiflora

Sorbus Tree Raised Bed

• Cyclamen – replanted
• Liriope muscari ‘Munroe White’

Magnolia Tree Pit

• Epimedium sulphureum

Garden Adjacent to Church Office

• Acer palmatum ‘Sango Kahu’

Written by Neil Bellingham