This garden is attached to a cottage in a small Somerset village where I lived for a while. In this one case, I was co-creating the garden with my partner at the time; Julia. The term 'clean slate' was almost made for this garden, although we could both see it's potential, we started out with little more than a sea of gravel (as the lower photos clearly illustrate). There wasn't anywhere left for birds to perch! Despite this, we turned it into an excellent example of how permaculture principles & a bit of hard work can create a garden in a very short period of time. We planted trees & built a pergola & grew on a lot of plants from seed in the first Spring. We also made the most of free resources, such as local topsoil, manure, rockery stones from next door & an old bath.

 To read more about how we did this, now visit the Design Process page.