DANNY COOPE

BEFORE PHOTOS

Current project:
My largest garden design project so far - Maplestone Farm, East Sussex

The front of the farmhouse, facing east

This north-facing area beside the old front door is the first part of the garden visitors will see.

The area on the south side of the house, is overlooked by the kitchen sink and the 1960s sunroom.

A mature bay tree dominates the hedge on the south side of the house. The field below slopes down to a massive leylandii hedge.

A row of 56’ or 17m tall Leylandii, pruned once in the 1980s, left to dominate the landscape and conceal the horizon all year round

Looking west from the statuesque Rhodo ponticum, past the clipped, curving shelter belt of holly to the old barn.

Once a piggery, the workshop is reached by an expanse of lawn, flanked by a so-called 'parklet' of shrubs on one side and an ancient fish pond, oak tree and pampas grass on the other.

The six acre field, sloping to the south, with a small woodland at the bottom

A small mixed woodland, with beech, oak, hazel and alder and circular depressions in the earth from ancient furnaces or charcoal pits

INTRODUCTION

A south-facing 10 acre farm consisting of garden, pasture and woodland situated in Broad Oak, Brede near Rye and Northiam in Sussex's High Weald AONB.

The soil is Wealden clay, similar to Great Dixter just 3 miles up the road. According to Cranfield University's Soilscapes website it's 'slightly acid loamy and clayey with impeded drainage' but pretty fertile.

The oldest part of the property dates from around the time of the Great Fire of London in 1666, but it has been regularly added to over its 350 year history.

EXISTING CHARACTERISTICS

With views west up the Tillingham Valley the garden (currently 1/3 acre) wraps around the house on all sides - and is a vacant expanse of lawn - peppered with violets, woodrush and moss to the east with primroses and toe-deep winter wet to the north.

There are some choice shrubs and beautiful mature oak, hazel and alder trees here and on the adjoining farmland.

CHALLENGES

Poor drainage and honey fungus are two challenges new to me. As is the hungry wildlife. Bullfinches strip the cherry trees of their flower buds - though only the top half. The mole seems not to be a natural snorkler and has vacated the boggy garden for the big field over the winter. There's a cute, baby rabbit getting through the fence somewhere, somehow,. Thankfully he prefers to eat the lush lawn grass - at the moment anyway - although he has sampled the chives and a sanguisorba.

There's a pair of golden Leylandii trees looming into every front window and obscuring the sunrises over Rye, but most challenging of all there's a solid, unnatural tower block of 28 mature 56ft tall Leylandii forming an ugly, barren barrier to the south which is neither useful nor beautiful. Its only saving grace has been the tumultuous curtain of green it becomes during a storm.

VISION

To augment the topiary for a La Louve-style area around the back door, the planting progressively becoming more informal, with a meadow-like expanse of perennials, grasses and shrubs making up the lions share of the garden, until grasses take over and the simplicity of a mown lawn reappears, melting into the sheep pasture beyond.

Supplement the fruit orchard and introduce more hedges and young trees elsewhere on the property for future generations of birds and people to enjoy.

BEFORE PHOTOS

Current project:My largest garden design project so far - Maplestone Farm, East Sussex

Current project:
My largest garden design project so far - Maplestone Farm, East Sussex