Time to to take a break and have a cup of coffee
| Living on land that was once a Roman camp, we are surrounded by dry stone walls, beyond which is part of a prehistory ditch. We entertained the thought that we might find buried ancient artifacts in our garden. When we moved here, the garden was a blank canvas with lawns and mature trees. However, once we started digging, the idea of discovering anything soon became short lived. As soon as we put a spade in the ground, we hit oolitic limestone and fossils. We had barely 10cm of soil, and no idea how we could establish any shrubs in such shallow earth. We decided to visit the internationally renowned gardens of the late Rosemary Verey at Barnsley House. She was a gardening guru to Prince Charles at the time that he was laying out the gardens at Highgrove House. On arrival at Barnsley House we had the garden to ourselves, but soon came across Rosemary tending the borders. H mentioned to her our problems with so little soil on top of limestone, and her reply was “go through it with a pick axe, my dears, make a large hole and fill it with compost”. She then proceeded to take us to her huge pile of compost, invited us to come at any time, fill our bags full of it and take it back to our home. H duly bought himself a very large steel chisel, which he painstakingly hammered into the ground, in order to carry out Rosemary’s instructions. We split the garden up into rooms, being the catch phrase at the time, but we have actually found it easier to work with separate areas, all of which have been given a different theme. Most of the things that we have planted have flourished really well, and now after 15 years the garden feels well established. |
Walled garden with pool  Lilium Regale |
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