I suspect many people who pass The Black Bear every day on Whitchurch High Street have no idea what’s just behind it, and to be honest, that’s always been part of the attraction. But after four and a half years of transformation, I think it’s time we said something about the little garden out the back.
Not all that long ago, it was what you might generously call a functional car park: patched with tarmac and a scruffy bit of grass that didn’t exactly lift the spirits. Michael Kemp, our head gardener, took one look at it and thought ‘this doesn’t reflect the loveliness of the pub’, and he was absolutely right.
So, in January 2021, armed with a scribbled plan on a piece of paper and a ball of string, Michael started shaping what’s become a rather special courtyard garden. A proper oasis in the middle of town, hidden behind a 17th-century timber-framed inn that once stabled 50 horses and kept pigs in the yard, to the great annoyance of Church Lane.
A garden that suits the age and character of the old pub, but adds something gentle and new. He said he wanted ‘each table to feel like its own little garden’, and if you’ve ever sat out there with a drink and let the day drift by, you’ll know he got it just right.
The courtyard is made up of beds edged with reclaimed bricks and old stable blocks, a nod to the building’s former life as a coaching inn. Vines and clematis climb up the pergola, the scent of daphne greets you as you walk through, and Virginia creeper spills over the boundary wall. Michael’s aim was to create year-round interest, to use plants with scent, texture and structure, all while wrestling with compact beds, stubborn footings from old stables, and Whitchurch’s ever-changing weather.
It’s a space full of quiet detail. Myrtle, Pittosporum and Hemerocallis. A Mexican Lobelia that thrives in the sun. An Edgeworthia that dazzles in early spring with its yellow-white scented flowers. Not everything survives, not everything’s meant to, but enough does to make each visit a little different.
Michael says the garden is constantly changing, and that gardens ‘never stay still… you plant one thing and it goes bonkers, you plant another and it dies’. That evolving, slightly unpredictable nature is part of the charm.
While Michael laid the bones of the garden, its soul has come from Lynne Gilmore, our head housekeeper at The Black Bear. If it wasn’t for Lynne, Michael says, the garden wouldn’t look how it does now. She tends it with tireless care, often before most of us are even awake. “I start early,” she told me. “It’s peaceful, quiet, and every day I’m still learning. I never imagined how much I’d love it. It’s wonderful.”
The pub itself has seen centuries of comings and goings. First owned in the 1670s by John Eddowes, later run by the Payne family, then by a string of landlords with names like Large, Thelwell, and Florris. I daresay none of them imagined anyone would see clematis flowering where the pig pens once stood.
So yes, the garden’s hidden. But it’s here, and it’s beautiful, and I’d love you to come and experience it for yourself. You don’t have to book. You don’t even have to like gardening. Just follow the scent of the daphne through the pub, past the bar, and step into something unexpected.
Because it’s not just about flowers and plants. It’s about care, attention, and the quiet things that make a place feel like it matters.