Linda Harland moved to Rye with her husband Stuart in 2013, and many Rye people will know her from the Open Gardens project and also from opening her amazing garden in Udimore where they moved to from London. It was one of her desires to have a large space to design and create beauty. Linda opened part of the ground to charities, so they could give a garden party with cakes and drinks. That is when I met Linda and saw her generosity. I helped clear up and that was the beginning of our friendship.
What Linda created in Udimore was magical with beds of flowers, a vegetable garden, trees and much more which one could explore in the spaces around the garden. And there was the stunning view across the valley we often admired over a cup of coffee. Their neighbours were mostly sheep who wanted to enjoy the garden, but not useful, and Stuart had to shoo them out of the lovely space. However, to give homage to their neighbours, Stuart decided to encase Linda’s casket with wool which in fact looked beautiful. Linda was born June 12, 1947 and died December 5, 2024.
While the Rye home did not have the same size of garden as the previous one, Linda loved designing and creating the space available and people admired her sense of putting the right plants with each other, flowers breaking up the green fern. She joined the Monday Open Gardens which was very successful especially as at the end of the garden was also a wonderful view across to Rye Harbour.
Once settled in, Linda got involved in Rye projects becoming a trustee of the Rye Art Gallery and later trustee of Rye Arts Festival and took over the Lamb House book group.
Linda was very much involved in the local politics in Udimore as she was later in Rye and with the Labour party. She was also the first person in Rye who invited the Labour candidate, Helena Dollimore, to fight for the seat and invited friends to ask questions of what she believed what she could do for Rye. Not surprising to some of the audience who knew Linda’s political stance, the entrance music at her funeral was The Red Flag.
Linda’s interest had always been in education and her work path took her to the Institute of Education where she got her PhD and took the leap into academia, lecturing at Greenwich University. At 50 she retired from lecturing taking on other roles, specifically with the Open University. But gardening was her passion and when living in Islington she set up Islington Gardeners which still is functioning. But in the end Linda wanted to design and create her own garden, so a decision was made by both, Stuart and Linda that they needed to move out of London and thus their next journey began in Udimore in 2003.
Image Credits: Stuart Harland .