Our Cottage Garden

Welcome to Holmcroft!

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Described by one visitor as "a chocolate box cottage" we became the owners of this piece of English history in May 2004

This garden is inspired by, and dedicated to, the late Mr. Alan Furness-Huson, a man who has guided my faltering steps into the wonderful world of gardening.

Thank you for visiting out website, if you wish to contact us then you can at- caroleandmike@anenglishcottageoneline.com

The latest new addition!

This garden will open as part of the National Garden Scheme on Sunday the 24th of June 2012 at 2pm!

The sunken garden.

It was a very deliberate decision to have little or now colour at the front of the cottage and to let the "greens" make the statement. The sunken garden is a lovely place to sit on a hot afternoon.

December 2010

Oh boy is it cold!

A glimps through the "window" created in one of the hedges in the garden. In years gone by the field beyond belonged to the cottage and was home to an apple orchard. This concept of the window has worked very well but never more so than in this picture.

My constant companion whilst in the garden. My friend came to live with us here just after we arrived. A keen gardener, she is very good at digging holes in the wrong places, stealing flower pots and chasing the rabbits in the garden.

Holmcroft in the 1970's

This picture was given to us by the nephew of the owner of the cottage for fifty years. We have an aerial picture taken only two years ago and it is already way out of date. I love this picture and have spent a long time pouring over it. Recently we had three people here who were evacuated to this part of the world during the war and they stayed in the cottage. They were able to tell us a good deal about the garden then and filled in some of the blanks for us!

The Willow Tree in September

When we arrive here in 2004 this willow tree was in some distress. It was shedding its leaves even in May. We had a specialist look at the tree and he confirmed that it was in trouble. Pollard the tree was the suggestion and that happened in February 2005 and just look at it now! The tree sits at the top of the steep bank which is front of the cottage and it is the centre piece of the refurbishment of that bank. The two stone pots were added in 07. There had been similar pots here some 30 or so years ago but they had been removed by a previous owner. These were a "snip" at a local auction and have been planted up as you can see with geraniums. There are plastic pots inside the stone one and they are changed three times a year so as to keep the planting looking fresh. To age the pots when we got them I painted them with cow manure. Very messy but it worked.

Gravel garden 2011

Developing nicely!

The Gravel Garden

Early days for this part of the garden.

The Terraced garden

We have pictures of this part of the garden going back to the 1030's. This whole section of garden is just given over to my obsession with perennials planting. I am constantly moving and improving this section of the garden.

The under gardener at work.

The under gardener said, when we came here, one of the most important aspects of this garden would be the ability to process everything that we removed from the garden. To this end he set about purchasing the equipment necessary to quickly compost down all that we take out of the garden. Here you see the two different kinds of shredders we use as well as the Hippo bag I put everything into till we have time to process it. This job is done about once a week at the change over period of each of the planting successions. The finely chopped material is then added to one of the many compost bins that we have.

Pride & Joy for the under gardener - compost!

As you can see we have many bins and they are all in use all the time. It never ceases to amaze me how it all rots down and ends up being a relatively small amount compared with what we take out of the garden. What is slightly out of shot here is the leaf bin. This is regularly turned out and added to the other bins when it has rotted down. The "tin man" as I call him disposes of the nasties such as leaf with black spot and bind weed. Some of the rubbish is considered by the under gardener as not suitable for HIS compost bins so finds its way to the local tip.

The gravel garden was much commended by Roy Lancaster when he judged the garden for the Shropshire Star "Garden of the year" competition. It has made quite an impact with many of our visitors and is the area of the garden that generates the most questions. It is continuing to mature very well.

a passion for a cottage and a garden