My garden at Tin Bath House, Whiteshill, Stroud is open by appointment, visitors are welcome.
Cost – £5 per person for a one hour visit with guided tour. Please Email to arrange your visit.
My garden is a one acre plot. The access includes steps and some fairly steep slopes, so please bear this in mind.
Near the house at the top is a bee and butterfly garden designed to be both ornamental and useful.
The next level down is the vegetable plot which is laid out in raised beds. There is a herb garden and lots of fruit and nut trees. Soil care and creation is central to our methods and we make lots of compost and liquid plant teas to supply nutrients. Mulching and keeping the soil covered at all times are important too.
The lowest level is a large wildlife meadow. We didn’t make it – it was here already and is an example of Cotswold limestone grassland – unimproved and home to a vast range of wildlife. Including orchids, great green Bush Cricket, grass snakes, common lizard, bats, yellow meadow ants and more… We scythe it in August and remove the hay to use as compost and mulching. It has been really encouraging to see how much the grass snake population has increased here over the last few years – we see numerous juveniles under our corrugated iron sheets we put out, and we find snake eggs as well as see the shy adults coiled up sunbathing.
A visit here will give you an immediate insight into how Permaculture can be used in practice in a domestic setting – we are lucky here to have lots of space but many of the ideas are translatable to small gardens.