When we first moved in to what is now Brightham House Boutique Bed & Breakfast there wasn’t just the house that needed transforming and bringing back to life, it was the courtyard garden too.

As you can see (photos below) the garden hadn’t been cared for many years, it was overgrown and needed someone with green fingers. With the help of friends and family the garden was cleared of all the overgrown plants, ivy and unwanted shrubs. It reveled a lovely big stonewalled enclosed garden and lots of space.

     

Alistair’s a keen plant lover, and fairly good gardener too, so he set about planting. With a strong passion for Italy, after many trips to Tuscany.  Top of the plants list was lots of Italian Pencil Cypress Trees (ten altogether). These have been planted in a row to create a beautiful display, and follow the line of the wall. Our love to travel to tropical countries meant that we must have a selection of exotic palm trees, which line the path as you walk through to the house. The plant budget was small to begin with in the first year, so bit by bit new plants arrived and things began to grow and flourish.

3 years on the garden has really taken shape (see photo’s below). During lockdown the garden designs that Alistair imagined began to come to life. We where able to complete a Japanese koi pond too. The wood-fired hot tub now sits nicely amongst the bamboo, along with extra outdoor seating and shading from the parasols. The garden now also spills into the carpark, where there is a wall of succulents, olive trees, trailing rosemary finished off with a  beautiful basil tree.

      

  

 

They say “To plant a garden is to believe in tomorrow.”