Where Do You Even Start With a Garden Like This?

Observations from the edge of a 400 year old farmyard

The outside space at The Messy House is probably the part of this project that requires the biggest leap of faith.

The house, despite everything, already felt like a home to us quite quickly. The garden still feels like a farmyard.

Heavy metal gates, broken troughs, concrete, corrugated roofs and hard edges everywhere. Despite not being a working farm for decades, there are still remnants everywhere of the life the place used to have.

When we started clearing the stables, we found old hay still piled up inside (alongside a few old sofas, stacks of suitcases and a forgotten filing cabinet).

When we first visited the house, we could see on the plans there was a small paddock at the back, but we couldn’t actually see it when we arrived, let alone access it. It had completely disappeared underneath seven-foot-high brambles, overgrown trees and a barrier of barbed wire.

Will’s most satisfying day on the project so far involved hiring something called The Green Mulcher (plus its trusty driver, our friend Jamie) which chomped through the back paddock’s brambles in under an hour.

Like real-life Robot Wars for grown ups.

And underneath it all; the brambles, the concrete, the hard edges, we can see there is huge potential.

The leylandii are probably the clearest example of this. At some point they had presumably been planted as a hedge, but by the time we arrived they were taller than the house, leaning towards it and blocking huge amounts of light.

Removing them felt drastic and for a few weeks afterwards everything looked shockingly bare, but it completely changed the feel of the inside of the house in an instant. Suddenly there was sky again and sunlight reaching rooms we had assumed were naturally dark.

We also had to remove two ash trees affected by ash dieback which I felt quite bereft about, a hundred years of growth and out in an instant. As my father-in-law reminded me, one of the realities of owning a place like this is realising that stewardship often means difficult decisions made early enough to protect what remains.

When I imagine what this place could eventually become, I keep thinking about a trip we took to Denmark last summer where the gardens felt completely different to the English gardens I’ve grown up around.

Much looser, softer and more relaxed. Long grasses catching evening light. Wildflowers pushed up against gravel paths. Fruit trees surrounded by planting that looked as though it had been there forever. Things self-seeding and more thought for wildlife.

We’ve started by planting a few woodland-y trees at the front of the house and next week Will and Fred will be sowing the grass seed (a mix of this and this), as the vision is the front of the house to be less lawn, more low maintenance wildlife friendly - but for the rest of the garden, we’re going to wait.

Before deciding too much about its future, we really need to live alongside it first.

We’ve been thinking about planting but need to know where does the frost sit longest?Which route do people naturally walk? What do we notice from the kitchen window in February, not just June? Where are the best places to sit in dressing gowns with a morning coffee, or for shady lunches in summer?

The goal is a garden that is beautiful but also useful. One that produces food and flowers, that changes with the seasons. One where children can disappear for hours barefoot and muddy.

At the moment though, the garden which was abandoned is now a blank canvas and full of possibility. Which, I suspect, is exactly how most good gardens begin...

What are the accounts, writers or books I should know about for garden inspiration, learning and scheming? Bearing in mind we are complete amateurs!