Our Editor in the Field

Kyra Pollitt meets Hamish Martin

Kyra Pollitt

I am sitting in the glasshouse of The Secret Herb Garden opposite its founder, Hamish Martin. “I don’t know if that’s your bird?”, he asks, nodding upwards, and I feel some shame that an unspoken sorrow I have been carrying has chosen to manifest at our meeting. “Mine is usually the robin,” he adds. This makes sense. Robins are messengers for the lost, bringing happiness, good fortune, and rebirth. As ‘my’ magpie caws from the eaves, Hamish is prompted to narrate his own journey from a place of sorrow to the creation of this green oasis on the outskirts of Edinburgh. Sure enough, as he finishes his tale, a robin begins to sing.

But let’s not rush the story. Instead, let’s follow the fluid curves of both his garden and his yarn, and circle back to the round table at which we begin, surrounded by Jasmine, Myrtle, Victorian Christmas trees, award-winning French Lilac, Lemon Verbena, Rosemary, Olive, and so much more. When Hamish first met this land, this glasshouse was broken but filled with those “native wild plants” which the unenlightened often call ‘weeds.’ Where others saw dereliction, Hamish saw the landscape of his dreams. Hand in hand with his new love, he could picture the paths, the plants, the wildlife, the way of life.

Hamish’s father had made sure his young boy walked regularly in the Pentlands, learned the joy of swimming wild. Indeed, the March equinox still marks the turn of year, after which Hamish rises daily at 5am for a walk and a wild swim. As a young man, Hamish set to work in the wine industry. But the real connection with plants came later, at a time when Hamish needed solace. He found it in the small urban garden of a rented property, persuading the landlady to allow him to transform a grass monoculture into “an invitation to other beings.” Those beings repaid his kindness with fortune, and so Hamish soon found himself creating paths and borders and planting in a once derelict glasshouse.

Looking around the site now, it’s clear that there is order here, and consideration. Hamish took night courses in Herbology at Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh and took care to source mother plants from “plant heroine”, Jekka McVicar. At a certain point in all this growth, Hamish began to feel a bit overwhelmed. He was living on-site in a static caravan with his blended family— three children, plus four children, plus five dogs. He had seen Jekka McVicar’s place and that kind of perfection seemed some way out of reach. Discouraged from book learning by his dyslexia, Hamish began to suffer imposter syndrome. He tells of his panic at an early invasion of red spider mites. A consultant was called in, who suggested predator aphids. But luckily, around the same time, Hamish had another realisation. It may have been the influence of Catherine Conway-Payne at RBGE, or perhaps the Medicine Man Hamish encountered in South Africa, or the indigenous Healer in North indigenous Healer in North America, but somewhere along the line, Hamish had learned to listen.Something in Hamish clicked. He understood that he did now not need consultants or paper qualifications, but self-belief.

The Scottish herbal world is small, and others pitched in to help this amiable chap with his venture. Whilst Hamish gathered Scots Lovage seeds from a picnic spot overlooking the Holy Isle, a retired Weleda gardener, Richard, got in touch and donated some Mallow seeds. Two weeks after scattering them throughout the glasshouse, Hamish learned that Richard had died. ‘Richard’s Mallow’, however, is alive and well and thriving across the site. Indeed, the Herb Garden now boasts over 800 species of cultivated herbs, each grown from seed or cutting. But this is not all about horticulture. Hamish is careful to balance what is taken with what is given. So, whilst there are herb beds and greenhouses, the Apothecary Rose Garden, a Juniper plantation, and a cut flower garden, there is also an oasis for bees, and the whole site is linked with untouched wildlife corridors. There are over forty-eight plant species in the gravel car park alone, many of them Scottish wild natives. As Hamish says, Give me one square metre of land and I can capture more carbon in two years than one tree can capture in a hundred.” We talk of methods and practices, shake our heads ruefully at some of the extremes of biodynamics, and concur that “listening” to the needs of plants, “vibing” with them, is key:

I found myself picking the St. John’s Wort on a solstice, then worrying that I had not followed the biodynamic calendar. When I checked, I found that the solstice was actually the optimum time for picking, of course. But I had done it because it felt right. I realised then that books can only tell you what is right on some other piece of land. You need to listen to what is right for the land in your care.

So, when Jekka told Hamish she didn’t stock Roses because they bring aphids, Hamish listened to his heart and sourced an alternative stock of Apothecary Rose plants. The result was not just the beautiful Apothecary Rose Garden, arranged like folding petals, but a solution to the problem that his new venture was only commercially viable during the milder and more productive months of the year. Experiments with distillations of Apothecary Rose, and other herbals, taught him that adding tonic water could change the colour of the liquid, turning it pink. From there the Apothecary Gin range was launched, going live to market in 2017 and expanding to supply bespoke gins to the likes of Fortnum and Mason— but also Aldi.

Fuelled now by his favourite Viennese whirl, Hamish takes me on a waltz around the Garden. A tall figure with a striking leonine mane, dressed in a kilt, he moves easily from one plant to the next. Hamish is undoubtedly an empath. Fingers reaching for a leaf here, eyes catching the merest hint of growth there, he knows this land because he feels it. He senses the soil, hears the growth, and he really knows his plants.

As we pass a curious tepee-like structure, Hamish says it was intended for use by his friend, a Shaman. We talk of another early initiative— offering free, guided faery walks to children— that became so popular Hamish began to dread the hundreds of eager youngsters regularly gathering to hear his tales and take a bite of Nettle. And there’s something in that. When taking from the earth, Hamish tells me, it’s important to know when to stop: “When the blackbird leaves the Elder, you should stop picking too.”

The derelict land that Hamish found is now fecund beyond imagining. Where the static caravans once stood is a fine house. The venture now extends to a café, a herb nursery, a distillery business, and a shop. And maybe that’s why Hamish is bracing himself to put The Secret Herb Garden on the market. It won’t be easy, but the business has developed such that he now spends most of his days with clean hands, and that is not the lifestyle he envisaged. So, some lucky person will soon inhabit this small paradise, and Hamish will move on, move closer to his dream of living off-grid, closer still to the faeries, the lichens, the mosses.

I come away with a gift of Scots Lovage and my hands smeared in Bog Myrtle pollen. With the very best of intentions, I wish Hamish Martin a filthy future.