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Phillip Stewart’s south Derry garden is fast becoming a television sensation…
IT’S likely you’ll be seeing and hearing more of Phillip Stewart. Such talent, enthusiasm and innate understanding of what ornamental gardening is all about rarely goes unrecognised. That’s not to say the 28-year-old hasn’t already caught the attention of others – he featured in RTÉ’s Ireland’s Garden Heroes last year and topped that in 2022 when Yew Cottage Garden was the only regional representative in Channel 4’s Garden of the Year, narrowly losing out on the top prize to a Victorian secret garden in Scotland.
By his own admission, Phillip is “like many millennials – struggling to get a mortgage”. While he’d much rather have his own place, the upside of living with his parents is that he’s close to the expansive cottage garden he’s created over the best part of a decade.
Nestled in the Co Derry countryside near Magherafelt, he says the 1,200sq metre space can sometimes “be a struggle to keep on top of ” but the rewards it brings to wildlife, including the bees his mother keeps, far outweigh any downsides. Then, of course, there’s the benefits to his own wellbeing and the win-win that comes from both working and relaxing in the garden.
It’s fair to say Phillip is immersed in his garden and gardening. He propagates all his own plants from seeds, cuttings or divisions. His style is naturalised and he tends towards herbaceous perennials, grasses, deciduous shrubs and succulents.
“I’ve always had a natural connection to plants and started growing lupins and gaillardias from the age of eight,” he says.
“I started working on the garden from the age of 15, experimenting with planting plans.”
He graduated from Greenmount in 2012 with a Level 3 Extended Diploma in Horticulture, securing the the Crosbie Cochrane Perpetual Award for best plantsperson. This was followed by six years working as a visual merchandiser at a Mid-Ulster garden centre, honing his horticultural, retail and people skills.
The site on which the garden and house sit was left to Phillip’s dad, who built the family home there 32 years ago. It is surrounded by land farmed his uncle and cousin and is fashioned in a style inspired by designers like Dan Pearson, Nigel Dunnett, Andy Sturgeon and Charlotte Harris.
Non-gardener parents meant the most ambitious bit of landscaping initially was 10 oak trees lining the driveway but in 2014 Phillip’s parents bought a small field at the front of their home, which “ate up most of their savings”.
“The end goal was to have a pond,” says Phillip.
The pond, with an island in the middle, is among a number of circular features and themes running throughout the garden. The fill from the pond was used to terrace the slope from the house over three levels, creating different areas within the space. It’s also been developed with more than a nod towards sustainability.
“The pond has no liner and is sealed naturally with clay/mud for biodiversity reasons – the whole garden is plastic free, chemical free and no weed membrane is used anywhere to boost biodiversity,” says Philip.
The development of Yew Cottage Garden did encounter a lull around six years ago when Phillip set off travelling across Europe. Covid, however, brought him back home to Derry, and enabled daily re-engagement with his garden.
:: You can see Phillip Stewart’s garden in Episode 3 of Garden of the Year on More 4, while his Instagram and YouTube channel are both called Yew_Cottage_Garden.
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