The Magical Garden, East Sussex

The Magical Garden project represents a profound transformation, turning a meticulously maintained show garden into a thriving, naturally beautiful landscape.

---

Key Features:

• Food Forest Agroforestry System: Integrating fruits, nuts, and berries with supportive species for a diverse, productive ecosystem.

• No-Dig Market Garden: A vegetable plot providing the household with organic produce, minimizing soil disturbance.

• Small-Scale Reforestation: Planting 3,000 native trees to restore woodland areas and increase biodiversity.

• Livestock Integration and Sustainable Coppicing: Implementing techniques to rejuvenate the soil and provide renewable resources, while enhancing wildlife movement and habitat.

• Sustainable coppice system: supplying year-round fuel for the fires of the house

• Rewilding pockets: inviting in many of the original fauna and flora

---

Although the previous owners were keen gardeners and employed four full time staff to maintain their “show garden”, the land was heavily degraded with compacted soils and little biodiversity within the neatly kept space. We took time to listen to and observe the land, and found inspiration in the borders where lay the original features of this English landscape - oak, hazel, bluebells and heather, teeming with birds and butterflies.

Choosing native plants and shrubs that attracted beneficial local wildlife has had a substantial snowball effect, as we invited the Bees and Butterflies to come, so the Birds and Rabbits appeared, which brought nesting Buzzards to the site which are now living and breeding on the land. Allowing the ponds to take on a more natural form has attracted wild ducks to the garden which provide much amusement as they waddle through the mowed pathways between the wildflowers.

Through careful observation and selection of native plants, we’ve invited an array of wildlife back into the garden, creating a dynamic, self-sustaining ecosystem. Our efforts have shifted the landscape from a formal garden to a biodiverse richness, enveloping visitors in a magical, natural experience.