This very weekend in 2010 we came to visit Hillside for the first time. We walked down the north-facing slope where our friends live on the other side of the valley, crossed the stream in the woods that runs the boundary and strode up the hill into the long shadows of the poplars. When we reached the house and its assemblage of makeshift outhouses, we turned around, faced into sunshine and surveyed our potential prospect. The uninterrupted view up and down the valley and fertile ground that in our minds eye represented dreams of being part of somewhere. 

It was a very different place back then, with its runs of barbed wire bringing the grazing to the very foot of the buildings. Bleak and exposed without any protection if you took it at face value, but already we carried the dream that one day the open slopes would carry orchards and a garden would nestle the buildings. We took five years to plan how we’d go about making change and in this time we ruminated. Noting where the light fell and the wind didn’t blow and where the shelter might afford us a warm corner in the sun or a cool one in the shade. I knew immediately that the garden should feel subservient to the view and to be part of it, but it was important that it allowed us to hunker into the slopes. The garden would provide us a sanctuary and a little sensuality as a counterpoint to the exposure.