Archways leading through the garden are clothed with crab apples and clematis and a weeping silver pear is the focal point of this formal garden. 

We serve our teas to garden visitors on a terrace overlooking the rose garden - the most idyllic outdoor café.

The sweeping gravel garden wraps around the front of our house. Here plants self-seed and wander about with joyous abandon, attracting clouds of butterflies and bumblebees. Aromatic creeping thymes, lavenders, hebes, tall junipers and euphorbias form evergreen structure. While wrens, dunnocks, and robins hop amongst the herbs, feeding on the invertebrates living in the free-draining gravel.

Elsewhere, borders are left standing to feed the visiting birds and create a habitat layer for wildlife. This tonal tapestry of seed heads and grasses looks magical with a dusting of frost and back-lit with the low winter sun. Swathes of Cornus and ornamental willows glow, ghostly white birches stand sentinel and specimen trees planted for their winter bark are starting to mature.

Birds

Twenty-three birds on the red and amber Birds of Conservation Concern lists live, breed or regularly visit. Kestrels, tawny and barn owls nest here. A kingfisher visits our natural pool. And the gardens are alive with goldfinches and noisy tree and house sparrows. Dunnocks, thrushes, blackcaps and wrens thrive here. In winter starling murmurations fly over the gardens, often landing in trees or visiting our natural pool, while fieldfares and redwings feast on windfalls in our orchard.

Pondlife

Water boatmen, pond striders, diving beetles, and whirligigs call our natural pool home. In summer, dragonflies and damselflies emerge from the water, darting across the reflective surface. While grey wagtails, oystercatchers and other birds bathe in the shallows, and reed buntings nest in the reeds. Toads, frogs and newts breed in our natural pool too, so we often stumble across a grass snake or two! It's also a haven for bats, with seven species spotted over our pool recently, including Daubenton's Bat.

Every species imaginable

Hedgehogs and their young tuck themselves away in the dense shelter belt around the garden edges. Beetles and invertebrates nestle in the rotting log piles. And in summer the borders are alive with butterflies, bumblebees, pollinators and insects.