IN BRIEF
Name Robin Hill. What Sweeping garden landscape around a 1920s house. Where Connecticut, USA. Size 20 acres. Soil Acidic and dry, thin and rocky in the meadow, richer in the woodland, long-cultivated in the cutting garden. Climate Winters in New England can be very cold, and the nearby town of Norfolk is known as ‘the icebox of Connecticut', with a short growing season (five months) and cool evenings in summer, due to its altitude. Hardiness zone USDA 5.
I'd hesitate to call it a garden,” Dan Pearson says regarding Robin Hill, a 20-acre property in Connecticut that his studio has been steering for the past decade. Although there are set pieces (a herb garden to one side of the house, an enclosure with a circular pond ‘Karl Foerster', its boundaries dictated by a pre-existing stone wall. To the occasional visitor, Robin Hill betrays none of the breathless industry of some conventional gardens; instead, all is serene. This is remarkable, given that it could have gone so wrong.
