Work has started on revitalising the Randell Cottage Garden.

The gardener at the historic Nairn Street Cottage, Hannah Zwartz, has been taken on as the Randell Cottage gardener as part of a project to revitalise the garden.

Trustee and Friends of Randell Cottage Chair, Mary McCallum is leading the garden project which includes Hannah (above), her mother Norma McCallum – a keen gardener who has drawn up the garden design – members of the Friends of the Randell Cottage committee, and the Botanic Gardens.

The trees have been heavily pruned to let in more light (thanks to the skills of Brett at Classic Aboriculture) and a recent working bee left the garden looking much tidier and more spacious and healthy.

Mary McCallum says it was great to have Friends of the Randell Cottage, Maggie Rainey-Smith and Dame Fiona Kidman (also a Trustee), working on the garden along with her parents – Norma and Lindsay McCallum, visitor to the Open Day Julie Middleton, and gardener Hannah Zwartz. Mary says the current writer Pat White (below) also got out and dug over the garden – ‘he’s as much a man of the land as a man of the pen, and we really appreciate his support for this project.’ She says the Trust is very pleased indeed to have Hannah as their new gardener. ‘She brings her expertise to the garden, and she is a lovely person to work with. After many years of just being weeded and mowed, we are sure the garden will blossom at her hands.’

Mary’s also excited the Botanic Gardens has offered spare plants to the Randell Cottage Garden. ‘This is a lovely thing to see,’ she says, ‘because the Randells lived in the Botanic Gardens before they lived at St Mary Street and they would have brought some plants to the new garden with them. It feels the right place for the plants to come from.’

Mary expects there will be some plant-swapping between Nairn St and St Mary Street too as the two cottages have a lot in common.