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Wednesday, April 28, 2010
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Friday, March 14, 2008
Not enough time for the garden.
Life is so busy at present I have spent very little time in the garden. I hope this weekend to make a big effort to start clearing the herbaceous borders, I have 20tons of manure dumped at the bottom of the lane to spread. We have already had people asking if we are open yet, apparently we were last Easter!!
Failing starting this weekend the Easter holidays are booked for work in the garden, so I hope the weather will be kind. I haven't designed anything new this winter, I've been working on some other gardens, so hopefully the big tidy up will be swift...
Our attempt to get the barn/garage converted into a tearooms is still on the drawing board, although a lot of thought has gone into getting the work done, its just a matter of digging up the existing brick floor, laying concrete and tiles. Removing the floorboards from the roof space, plaster boarding the roof and fitting a kitchen and water. Then installing doors and windows.....should only take a couple of hours.
The woodland gardens are looking good, the hellebores and small daffodils have been joined by pulmonaria's and other small bulbs that give wonderful bursts of colour, I'm really pleased.
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Saturday, July 14, 2007
Saving Grace
In the third in our series on summer gardens to visit, Elspeth Thompson basks in the shoestring splendour of Ochran Mill.
With eight children between them, and up to three foster children at a time, you wouldn't have thought Elaine and David Rolfe had much opportunity for gardening. And yet, in less than five years, they have not only created a beautiful garden from a couple of rough fields, they also open it to the public and have been runners-up in several nationwide competitions, including BBC Gardener's World Gardener of the Year. How do they do it, when many people with far fewer offspring find it hard to produce more than a muddy lawn strewn with plastic toys and tyre marks?
When the family moved to rural south Wales from the suburbs of Bristol, they weren't looking for a place to make a garden - "Just somewhere big enough for us all to live in," David laughs.
Ochran Mill, with its outbuildings, rusty Grade II-listed waterwheel, and grassy fields sloping up to woods behind, seemed ideal. While space for the children to play was a priority, Elaine could also see the potential for a garden, resuming a hobby that had lain dormant since she helped her mother as a child.
"Initially, we earmarked the lower field for the children, but then we worried about its proximity to the road and stream," she says.
With the children relegated to the upper field, Elaine set about marking out the beds with a ride-on mower - some were sweeping curves that cut a swathe through open grass, others smaller crescent moons that skirt the trees or follow the path of the stream. Less than five years on, this lower garden, entered through a stone gateway, is lush and leafy.
Grass paths weave between colourful borders, beneath arbours clad with clematis and roses, and around rustic summerhouses that have been home, over the years, to chickens, guinea pigs and chinchillas. The planting is confident, with bold grasses and dramatic dark and gold foliage among the rainbow-themed beds. These begin with the scarlet rose 'Dublin Bay', and run through orange oriental poppies and red-hot pokers, yellow grasses and day lilies, to the cooler blues and mauves of delphiniums and foxgloves and the silver-leafed teucriums and cardoons.
Wooden arches, woven wicker obelisks and a trio of slim silver birches frame views of a sunken seating area and well-placed urns and sculptures. Most of the wooden structures are the work of David, and on open days his collection of vintage pinball machines is popular with non-gardeners. "I don't dig or plant," he says. "I make things. That's my contribution. Plus, I feed the children so Elaine can get on with the rest of it."
Two years ago, having run out of space, Elaine turned her attention to the upper field, where she dug three ponds linked by little waterfalls that trickle down the hillside. She also created more sweeping beds, where wilder plants such as witch hazel and pink spires of foxgloves, are silhouetted against a backdrop of dark firs.
This spring, David built a curving clematis pergola to lead visitors into the new garden and a small circular summerhouse by the water. Realising they were now encroaching on the children's territory, the couple levelled some sloping ground to create raised circular lawns that are shored up with retaining walls made from fallen logs. "The kids love all the winding paths," David says. "Plus ,they still have the top lawn, treehouse and woods to run wild in."
With the rent to pay, the children to look after and an erratic income from fostering, web design and opening the garden, this inspiring place has been created on a shoestring budget. The plants are mostly bargains picked up here and there, grown on and divided, or donated by family, friends and visitors. The pond liner was bought on eBay and much of the timber came from local woods.
But the biggest savings have been achieved through sheer hard labour - to have this much landscaping done professionally would have cost thousands of pounds. "There are times when we can't do much, as some of the foster children are quite demanding," Elaine says. "When they arrive, they all behave like two-year-olds, following us around, and many aren't able to go to school."
But when time and weather permit, she and David are in the garden all hours, stopping only to make tea for visitors or to do the school run. Elaine is keen to convert an old barn into a tearoom and plant a nursery, while David wants to finish a blue Tardis gateway to the woods and make another log seat in the new grass circle. "The seats are for the visitors, really," he says. "We never sit in them - there's far too much to do."
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Saturday, June 09, 2007
Evening Opening
Don't forget our open evening this coming thursday (14th June 2007).
We've got a licenced bar so it should bequite fun! click on the poster for a large version. Dave
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Sunday, May 06, 2007
First NGS Day of 2007
Today was our first NGS opening of the year and to my untrained eye the garden seemed pretty much up together. I spent the first part of this week building a new summerhouse structure next to the pond and I was quite pleased with the results. I also cleared a bit more of the woodland path and built two new seats in the woods. Elaine was pottering about doing weeding or what ever it is she does.
 Not to many people this time - about 150, not much for us but quite a few nevertheless. As usual those that did come spent a long time here. Much more interest in the pinball machines this year, probably because they are mentioned in the yellow book now.
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Thursday, March 29, 2007
Spring Once Again
We've got the waterfall in the ponds working now, and moved in some of the fish from the waterwheel pond. Millions of tadpoles now inhabit the wildlife pond which give the children endless hours of interest. Further around the garden the hellebores and daffodils planted last year are in full bloom and very colourful. My bargain £5 camellias have flowered their socks off above the ponds.
The new raised circle is almost completed (notice M'spouse busy working), when it is I'll be able to transfer the turf from the waiting bed (to the right of the new steps) up into the circle and then get on with planting out grasses and late flowering herbaceous plants to finish off the autumn colouring.
I've also nearly completed digging over the bed above the pond, where the summerhouse is going to be sited, this was the first area we planted in the garden, but it got neglected and grass soon infested it, so its really pleasing to get it dug over.
I'm just waiting for some more of the bog garden plants to start shooting in the herbaceous gardens so I can transplant them into the boggy area around the pond, hopefully I won't have to buy anything it is already here.
The woodland walk is progressing well, this area is the newly cleared area, in last months photo it was still covered in dense trees. This next area has many uprooted trees, the conifers don't seem to send a tap root down and so are very shallow rooted and I think a combination of winds and high water has brought these down, so there is still loads of clearing to do. The newly exposed bank with some bluebells already established, I'm going to transplant some native foxgloves from another part of the woods into the banks, I also found a large colony of wood anemones which I'm very pleased about.
The herbaceous borders are still being tackled. They've been rather neglected for the last year or two, so need dividing, pruning and weeding well, so progress is slow. The hellebore beds are looking stunning and have increased in size enormously, there are lots of seedlings I need to collect and grow on in the woodland gardens at the back....
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| diary: |
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2008
2007
2006
2005
2004
2003
2002
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| A trip to Westonbirt Aboretum |
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Last Sunday Ochran Mill played host to the First Annual 
