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The Garden is in three parts, which we will call the Vegetable Garden, the Middle Garden and the Sunken Garden. Click on the plan to see the detailed layout. This plan is the current version of a drawing that I am developing on CAD (computer aided design) software and is too detailed to show in full here (click on it for a larger version and use the Back button to return). |
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Follow the links to see some progress photos of our work in the garden.
The immediate problem was to clear it as it was rather overgrown - its surprising how much things grow between May (when we first saw it) and early August when we completed. The
Sunken Garden was the worst and took most of August to deal with.The
Vegetable Garden is a walled garden, but up to the 1950's it was actually stables belonging to the cottage next door. We soon had ideas for the nearly rectangular space and are modelling our "Potager" rather loosely and optimistically on Villandry. The 8 main beds are for vegetables, properly regimented and rotated. We shall get some espalier apples for the walls, to replace some old apple and pear trees which had become very misshapen, but which still gave us some tasty fruit last autumn. There will also be areas for soft fruit, herbs and compost!Ideas for the other gardens are slower to emerge. In principle, the
Middle Garden will have - herbaceous beds with a modest area of grass and a hornbeam hedge to divide it from.....the Sunken Garden, which already has a brick terrace and steps. It is about 8 feet lower than the rest and was, reputedly, the end of an old commercial sand-pit. Needless to say, the site is well-drained. We hope to make this part of the garden more natural looking and have already planted a few trees - some birches and rowans.Looking over the Sunken Garden is a small flat area (the
Promenade) which we have turfed. If you sit at the end, you can see the church clock (which is fast).
