Dan started work at Home Farm in 1987, when an existing client bought the ruined farmhouse and 3 acres of farmland. It became a 14 year project fundamental in Dan’s education in the practice of sustainable, naturalistic planting.
The site had a very strong sense of place, surrounded by mediaeval ridge and furrow fields and ancient woodland and the landscaping was designed to lead the eye naturally out into the landscape, blurring the boundaries between the cultivated areas and the countryside and bringing the landscape right up to the buildings. The spaces closest to the buildings were designed as naturalistic, ornamental environments, together with a kitchen garden and small fruit orchard.
Behind the house the land was shaded by a mixed wood, and the space was planted to feel moody and overgrown. It connected to the surrounding woodland through the use of decorative varieties of British natives – elder, beech, sorbus, sedge, guelder rose, ferns, roses, geranium and brambles.
A wind garden of grasses and hardy perennials on the site of an exposed front paddock linked the front of the house to the barn buildings. A soft, informal planting, enclosed by a formal lime walk, contained drifts of grasses to connect to the meadowland beyond. Clipped yew forms provided weight and gravity and referred to the mounded forms of single trees on the horizon.
The Barn Garden was protected by the stone walls of the original milking enclosure and baked by the midday sun. The heat and light were amplified by the planting, with hot colours and mobile grasses to catch the light and wind. A yew hedge concealed the dramatic ornamental planting from the wild countryside outside and was clipped into a sinuous wave to echo the distant hills.
The property was sold in 2001, but the current owners have maintained the original planting to a large extent, and it is still included on garden tours from time to time.
Images © Nicola Browne & Andrew Lawson
Home Farm
1987 - 2001
Client: Frances & Andrew Mossman
3 acres
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