Bristol Food Forest & Wildlife Garden Design

A FAMILY FOOD FOREST

Mandy and Mike got in touch with a vision. They shared my passion for reconnecting with the land and wanted to use their garden as a place where they could do that every day.

Their existing garden was a fairly large plot but didn't represent them. It had all the trappings of a typical garden: the usual features, a pergola, lawn and borders, but it lacked identity. Certain areas had received special focus, a garden studio for Mike to work in and a pond he had developed. You could tell how much they loved nature, and these were the parts of the garden they were most proud of, but they were lost with the rest.

For me, the key was to create a holistic plan that linked the whole garden together. We would reuse and celebrate the elements that worked, but create something original that felt like a place you could get lost in and escape to. I challenged the initial ideas of curved paths and circles, which are commonly thought of as more 'natural', and, as with all my work, started with the straight line. Once we have the framework, the rest can get as wild as we want to let it.

Huge planting areas create a tiered food forest, with a central meadow sown from a seed mix. The pergola was reused to frame the dining area, but the centrepiece, inspired by Mandy's love of sky gazing, is a solid oak platform with structural upright beams to support a hammock.

"We are blown away by our garden every single day, and we struggle to believe that it's ours as it's so beautiful. It's a great meditative, healing, fun space for all the generations in our family.

We all graze our way around the garden as it presents its bounty, and there's plenty left for the wildlife that we share the space with. In fact, they tend to beat us to it and eat a lot of the fruit before we get to it.

I am grateful to Steve every single day of the year as our garden moves through the seasons and we admire its beauty."