Westwind: Outdoor Inspiration

Four years ago, a visit to a National Garden Scheme open day inspired Kate Stewart-Hilliar to tidy the small woodland at her mother’s property in Wiltshire. Today, the garden is open by arrangement under the Scheme and twice a week becomes an outdoor classroom for local school children. This is Kate’s story.

On 24 July 2022, I visited Broughton Grange on their National Garden Scheme open day along with my late mother and husband to be. The garden was spectacular and enjoyed by us all, but things changed for me when I visited the woodland area. I just fell in love with it, for me it was magical and all these thoughts and ideas came rushing to my mind.

My mother had a small woodland area on her property which was overgrown and not really used. I spent the next two weeks strimming, chopping and doing a massive clearance. Suddenly the woodland was a bright and beautiful space. The woodland backs on to the property’s meadow which is a Downland meadow full of buttercups and daisies as well as butterflies, hares, visiting roe deer and more.

In 2023 we opened the property for the National Garden Scheme for by arrangement visits and I still run these visits since my mother passed away in December 2024.

In September 2023 Westwind started a link with the village school, we had initially offered them the woodland and meadow for the occasional nature walk but when their Outdoor Learning teacher came to visit the property she fell in love with it and asked if they could come up weekly for their outdoor classes, we said yes. My mother had been a primary school teacher back when we lived in Ireland, so she relished the idea of sharing her land with the children.

Westwind has just started its third academic year with the school and has over 1000 footfall each year. It started off with weekly visits on a Thursday, but this has grown and a class also now visits on a Tuesday. The children love their time at Westwind and can cover so much including orienteering, science, art, team building and history. Every June, Year 3 has a Roman battle in the meadow, it is the Romans vs Celts where the Romans win…they come in costume and it’s wonderful to watch. They build dens in the woodland and make stone age tools from my pile of flint and do colour matching and so much more. The teachers come up with amazing tasks for the children to do.

On Poetry Day, which is 2 October, about 60 children were in the woodland composing poems about their observations from their visits. Their poems were fantastic especially when they mentioned Westwind by name in their work. I work the garden, so it was very personal and precious to me.

The children also make use of the main garden and very much enjoy the pond which is home to fish and many dragonflies. They love watching the progress of the frogspawn…so do the visiting ducks! The children also do artwork in the main garden and produce some excellent work.

My mother lost her battle with Motor Neurone Disease but the weekly visits from the school gave her so much joy, she would wander the garden and see them doing their tasks and they enjoyed showing off their work to her. She and her late husband had transformed the garden over the past 40 years and her legacy to me is to carry on with the garden and hosting the weekly visits for the school as well as the National Garden Scheme by arrangement visits and hopefully more planned for the future. Mum felt, with the link with the school, that the garden had finally found its purpose.

Westwind brings much joy to many children, in a world full of technology it’s great to see them amongst nature where childhoods should be spent…and it all began because of a visit to Broughton Grange opening with the National Garden Scheme.

I am very keen to promote the idea of other garden owners following in my footsteps if they have village schools nearby. Our school is within walking distance which is perfect.

To find out more about visiting Westwind and to contact Kate click here

This article first appeared in the 2026 edition of The Little Yellow Book of Gardens and Health – you can read it here