Sitting on just over 5 acres of land, Wood Farm has about 2 acres of ‘garden’ around the house (including the orchard and vegetable plot), and then a roughly 3-acre meadow.
Two acres of garden sounds like a lot to look after and, certainly, if you want a perfectly manicured garden then you’ve got your work cut out but it would be a joy for anyone wishing to indulge their gardening passion.
The orchard has an abundance of fruit trees including: various eating apples, bramley apples, plums, quince, cherry, pears, a mulberry tree, and greengage.
There are also walnut trees, sweet chestnut trees, and hazelnuts bushes in the hedges along with blackberries, hawthorn and rosehips. Jam makers will be in their element.
MANAGING THE LAND:
Since living here, we’ve found our preferred way of enjoying the land we’re privileged to have guardianship over, is to try to make it as easy as possible to care for. It works for us.
We do this by:
- Only having one main area of ‘flower’ garden to look after, plus the beds immediately around the house.
- Much of the 2-acres is grass, so a ride-on mower makes short work of that.
- Quite a bit of the garden is taken up by the two ponds.
- For the meadow, we have an ancient (beloved) tractor and a ‘topper’ we use once or twice a year. Alternatively, the local farmer will cut the meadow grass for us.
- We take pleasure in the many trees and large shrubs we have.
- We have help. Currently we have someone to do the flower beds 3 hours a week plus another person for 1 day a fortnight to help with heavier jobs like digging and hedge-cutting.
