Here is the final design drawing for the site. Nearly all of the detail that can be seen here was implemented, with only the finer detail of plantings around the Willow house still to have been decided (effectively zone 1). This home garden area is protected on all sides by it's own fruiting windbreak planting scheme. The plantation to the North will in time give more shelter to the whole site from that direction & to reduce South Westerly prevailing winds I'm planting a stand of Sea Buckthorn on the cliff in that far corner. A further belt of fast growing Alder & Willow down the wet West side gives extra protection there too. The main orchard area is planted out over on the drier East side where the trees would be happiest & able to get plenty of sunshine too. The marshy area at the bottom of the slope is an excellent place to grow Willow & Reedmace & the stone ruin next to it could one day be rebuilt in time as a stone cone with great acoustic properties.

 Living off the land makes growing decisions a bit more important than usual, which is why this garden has a preponderance of food plants, many of which are unfamiliar to most gardeners. However a lot of research has been done into such valuable plants in recent years by the likes of Plants for a Future & the Agroforestry Research Trust & I was able to make good use of some of this using the then recently published 'Plants for a Future' book. Alongside the more recognisable fruits, vegetables, herbs & flowers we grew more of those unusual plants & they constituted a good proportion of our diet. Thus it is obvious for me to plant more of what we enjoyed eating & that was successful, in the new home garden.

 The home garden is chosen to be on the driest part of the site & where there is a natural slight backward slope, dropping it down into the hillside a little. This dip makes a great little sheltered suntrap & a place to lie down & 'disappear' into when required. I need to define a boundary for this garden & to protect it from wind damage, so I've decided to surround it with a hedge of species that I know do well locally & that could provide me with fruit & shelter, as well as habitats for the wildlife. Intermingled with these I'm going to plant a few experimental plants & if they don't survive it won't be too much of a problem to fill a gap. Along the line of the hedge I'll also plant fruit trees, which would in time form part of the boundary. Along the wet West edge I'm using New Zealand Flax as the hedging plant as I'm not going to be short of Willow & I thought it would be a good experiment to try growing it.

 Within the sheltered area of the home garden & in the lee of the Willow house up against the south-facing retaining wall, I'm planting the two most vulnerable trees, the Fig & the Apricot. This area is also where I'm going to grow many of the plants that had proved to be reliable in other gardens on the land. We had used several different planting strategies to reduce losses to wildlife & those that had previously worked were well worth trying again. White strawberries fooled the birds & while the resident rodent population devoured our brassica stems killing the plants, they left many of the 'exotics' for us.

 Two Sweet Chestnuts would in time dominate the garden, providing plenty of protection from the North & a lot of chestnuts every year I hoped too. I'm choosing a fast cropping variety, 'Marron de Lyon', which reportedly produces chestnuts as early as within eight years. Other interesting & useful shrubs are being planted here, including Myrtus Ugni, an evergreen which has beautiful blossoms & a delicious fruit, apparently the favourite of Queen Victoria! Somehow it never caught on, but I want it in my garden anyway. Three paths lead in & out of the home garden, one to the South & the cottage & wellspring, one to the East & the orchard & the other to the West & the pool above the site which is deep enough to swim in.

 The centrepiece of the home garden is an experiment in creating a living home (this is before willow sculpting was really popular!). Hazel is being used to create a 'bender' structure & Willow wands planted around its base & tied on in a diagonal trellis fashion. There are two potential entrances which both curve into the central space in a double spiral (like a twin-arm galaxy), either of which could be used depending on the prevailing wind at any time. Each entrance being quite low to cut down the wind blowing into the structure.

  Whilst the entrances themselves are low, the headroom increases as you venture inside & is high enough to allow standing in the centre. The two entrances are pointed towards the North West & the South East, because these are the two directions least likely to be the source of the local winds. A large rock is to provide the basis for a fireplace & a stone chimney built on top of it. While the structure would in time provide a good wind shelter, quite how it could be made rainproof is still to be tested. I had thought about slowly adding small amounts of turf, allowing the Willow to grow up & out through it, until finally the structure of the building is provided by root material covered in turf, with the wands growing up out of it... but whether it would work? This was my first big piece of research & one that unfortunately I didn't in the end have the time there to see through.

Fruit trees are planted on the higher, better drained areas, amongst the existing Birch & Larch trees there, to make an orchard. Many varieties are being tried to increase diversity, spread the cropping over a longer season & reduce the risk of crop failure on a big scale. I'm planning the planting so that the trees further down the slope would provide a bit of shelter from the prevailing winds for the trees behind them. Eleagnus Ebbingei is being planted to fix nitrogen & to also provide a fruiting, living windbreak for some of the vulnerable fruit trees.

 There is also a need to protect trees from being ringed by hares, this I'm doing using cut rushes tied loosely around their stems. In order to increase the fertility of the land I'm also planting a lot of deep taprooted plants in amongst the trees to bring up nutrients to the surface. When the top growth dies down in winter it falls onto the surface & puts the nutrients into the topsoil, in the same way that trees do when shedding their leaves, but more quickly.

 I have also placed trailing squashes between the trees, where they can clamber up & over the other plants. Chilecayote (Cucurbita ficifolia) was a particular success story on the land, sending out thirty foot long tendrils in every direction & depositing vast green & white striped squashes all over the landscape - this is just what I need in the new garden! They also taste delicious & they keep well too - if we can resist them that is, so they are a perfect food for winter storage. There is also a secret elevated spot on this side of the garden, which with the addition of a hedge of blackcurrants would create a small place to sit & look over the garden without being noticed!

 I am laying stepping stones in the stream so that in the winter months the crossing can be made without freezing my feet. Soft fruit is being planted along the sides of the paths in the best places for them to thrive. Raspberries I am planting in clumps, as they would naturally grow. I'm thinking that this will provide some invisibility from birds for the fruit in the middle & create a temporal cropping. Perhaps the canes on the leeward side would fruit first? The Blueberries are an expensive small scale experiment, but with the acid soil, they should in theory do well here. The lower slope is also already home to a giant 'Turtog'; a large lump covered with a great diversity of beautiful little plants - clearly an excellent example of beneficial relationships!

 The small ruin at the bottom of the slope seems to have enough rocks in it to build a stone cone (when all the other jobs have been done of course!). There is one about ten feet high, in a park down in the village as part of a small group of stone sculptures. What is particularly amazing about it though is the acoustics inside it & we always visited it when we were in the village to do some toning there. To have our own on the land would be great & it would also provide us with an opportunity to learn a bit about dry stone building.

 This last part of the site is where the water slows right down & goes under the pathway somehow. It is a body of water that would be perfect for growing an excellent crop of reedmace (for it's carbohydrate-rich roots) & Willow (for hedging, biomass & more building materials), Alder would also thrive here. There is a small area of short grass here too, which is presumably gardened by the local hares (there are apparently no rabbits in Eire). I am planting five cherry trees here, three of them wild County Mayo (North West Eire) varieties which would hopefully grow even better in the warmer South West.

 The ways that I have applied this Final Design are to be found on the Implementation page.