The Garden of reimagination
A showcase garden & home of Two Green Shoots
Step inside
this space
A space to taste test design ideas & delicious details – the team like to to call it their open-air sketch pad! With edible topiary, a living willow ‘onion’ arbour, a bridge through a strawberry tree & a window’n’doors glasshouse – this is a garden full of fun & the freedom to fail, allowing the design team to bring to life nourishing new possibilities to share with you.
The re-imagining process
Dig deeper & explore how this space continues to be transformed…
The Space
An overgrown acre of invasive rhododendron ponticum, choked by grisellina with a house at its heart & unknown to the owners a lost garden underneath it all!
Team Brief
“We want to craft a forest garden, a space to celebrate weird and wonderful rare edible plants as well as wild native botanicals. The garden also needs to focus on creating a variety of habitats & homes for wildlife. The space will be opened to the public for tours so needs to have good access throughout.
Currently the garden of approx 1.5 acres is very overgrown with rhododendron ponticum, as well griselinia which has self-seeded everywhere as well as some very large Lawson cypress which have shaded out most of the garden. We have learnt from our neighbour that buried under a lot of the leaf litter are some incredible stone steps and other structures which were laid out by a British plantswoman in the 1940’s. We’ve found stone walls & a fountain too. The design needs to focus on restoring & enhancing as many of these original features as possible.”
The Design Process
Not only does The Garden of ReImagination provide the Two Green Shoots team with a space to try out design ideas & test a diversity of planting for suitability (& tastetibility!) it also gives the team a chance to hone their overarching design processes. During the lockdown in early Summer 2020, the team we able to launch a series of virtual gardening workshops & advice session from & using the space.
The Build
This is an ongoing process as work is fitted in around other key projects elsewhere. However, since Sept 2017 the gardens have been restored with lost pathways uncovered and re-connected. A new coach friendly driveway & car-park has been installed, a hand-dug wildlife pond created using reclaimed carpet & wool to form the liner underlay, handcrafted bridges built with timber from the surrounding woods, brash from clearance works woven to form wildlife friendly dead hedges & in between it all hundreds apon hundreds of rare, unusual & wild edible plants from across the globe.
“It’s a joy seeing the bounty nature is bringing to the space – not only the fantastically nourishing flavours of sorrell, plantain or fuchsia flowers but the sounds of our territorial robins & smell of the first flush of fungi amongst the Autumn leaves.”
Two Green Shoots Co-Founder – Adam Carveth
