Meet our writer in residence: Andrew Jackson

We are pleased to announce Andrew Jackson has come on board as our writer in residence, writing for our beautiful York Gate Garden. Andrew is the Winner of the Garden Media Guild New Talent Award 2025 and we will be sharing his creative compositions inspired by York Gate, throughout 2026.

Alongside design work, Andrew writes on gardening, landscape and place, his work focuses on helping people create gardens that feel rooted, generous and alive, even on the newest plots of land. We are pleased to announce Andrew  has come on board as our writer in residence, writing for our beautiful York Gate Garden. 

Andrew Jackson is a UK-based garden designer, writer and campaigner specialising in new-build gardens and nature-led design. Through his work, he challenges the idea that new developments must begin as blank, ecologically poor spaces, instead advocating for gardens that are rich in wildlife, character and sense of place from day one. Alongside design work, Andrew writes on gardening, landscape and place, his work focuses on helping people create gardens that feel rooted, generous and alive, even on the newest plots of land. We are pleased to announce Andrew  has come on board as our writer in residence, writing for our beautiful York Gate Garden.

Andrew is the founder of The New Build Manifesto, a growing campaign that works with homeowners and developers to rethink how outdoor spaces are designed, sold and valued. His approach blends practical horticultural knowledge with a strong narrative sensibility, influenced by writers such as Beth Chatto and John Clare. Andrew is also the writer in residence for Helmsley Walled Garden in North Yorkshire.

Bowed Heads at the Turning of the Year

I came upon York Gate as one might step into a remembered page of a book, the kind that falls open of its own accord. It was late winter, that held breath between the year just gone and the year yet to speak, and the air had a clean thin chill that carried sound as if wrapped in glass. Somewhere water moved quietly. Somewhere a gate closed with a forgiving click. The garden lay ahead not as a spectacle but as a welcome, measured and calm, a place that did not shout its beauty but trusted that you would lean close enough to see it. 

The snowdrops were already waiting. They did not stand to attention like soldiers nor gather in any boastful way. They bowed instead, each white head inclined as if listening for a story being told under the soil. They made a low white tide beneath hedges and along paths, threading themselves between tree roots and old stone with a patience learned over decades. These were not flowers of conquest. They were flowers of return.

I walked slowly, because the garden asked for it. There was no sense of hurry here, no instruction to move on or see more. The paths wound with the modest confidence of something planned by people who loved both order and pause. Snowdrops stitched the edges of these paths, sometimes thickening into a drift, sometimes thinning until you had to look twice to see them. Their leaves were a green like clean glass, narrow and purposeful, rising straight from the earth as if drawn by a steady hand.

It is easy to think of snowdrops as shy flowers, but there is nothing timid about them. To lift themselves into the air when frost still holds the ground is an act of quiet bravery. They arrive when the world is stripped back to shape and shadow, when colour is a rumour rather than a fact. At York Gate they seemed to understand their role perfectly. They were not there to dominate but to reassure. They spoke softly of continuity, of the year turning even when the wind denied it.

Then there were the hellebores, half concealed, keeping their counsel. Where the snowdrops lifted their pale faces without fear, these darker flowers chose secrecy. Their red and purple blooms hung low and turned inward, tucked beneath broad leaves as if unwilling to be observed too closely. You had to slow down to find them, to look beneath the foliage where colour lay waiting in shadow. The richness of their tones felt private, almost withheld, and it was this restraint that sharpened the brilliance of the snowdrops nearby. White rang clearer against those hidden depths, while the hellebores seemed content to glow quietly to themselves, holding their colour like a memory not yet spoken aloud.

Together they made a conversation you could almost hear if you stayed still long enough. The snowdrops spoke first, light and open, offering the simplest truth that life continues. The hellebores answered more slowly, from deeper ground, reminding you that survival does not always need display. Moving between them felt like reading two lines of the same poem written in different hands, one spare and bright, the other dense and inward.

The garden itself felt like a long conversation between people and plants. Hedges were clipped with care but never pressed into stiffness. Yew walls rose and fell like dark waves, sheltering corners where light pooled briefly before moving on. In these pockets the snowdrops gathered and shone, while nearby the hellebores waited in their own shade. Trees stood bare but expressive, their branches writing careful lines against a pale sky.

I bent down and saw that no two snowdrops were quite the same. Some bells were plump and full, others slimmer and more upright. Some nodded deeply, others tilted just enough to offer a glimpse of green markings within. The hellebores too held variation, though you had to look harder to see it. Some leaned toward crimson, others toward a purple so dark it seemed to absorb light rather than reflect it. Together they gave the planting a quiet movement, a sense that the garden was breathing slowly.

Memory slipped in as easily as breath. Snowdrops have always carried remembrance with them, tied to cold walks and early mornings, to the sound of gravel and the feel of wool against the neck. Hellebores hold a heavier memory, one of endurance and of colour carried through difficult weeks. At York Gate those different memories lay side by side, not competing but completing.

Leaving was a quiet act. The snowdrops remained bowed in their places, catching what light they could. The hellebores stayed folded and inward, content with their own secrecy. Stepping back through the gate the wider world felt louder and quicker, but something steady came with me. Later it was not individual flowers I remembered but the act of walking among them. York Gate Garden had offered its winter flowers not as display but as companions, and between white and shadowed colour they told the truth of the season turning, honestly and without haste.

- Andrew Jackson @thenewbuildmanifesto