Daily Mail - Daily Mail Weekend Magazine
LIVING THE GOOD LIFE, WITH A DASH OF MULBERRY GIN
Claire Bailey-Scott, 43, a tax manager, is married to Robert, 57, a window cleaner. They live in a Grade II-listed farmhouse in Gosberton in Lincolnshire.
It’s said that the key to success is good preparation, and Robert and Claire Bailey-Scott certainly put in a lot of spadework before they started planting their garden. ‘The grass was waisthigh and the nettles came up to my head,’ says Robert. ‘Then there was the 27 tonnes of hardcore and eight tonnes of gravel we had to remove. We were restoring the house at the same time, as it hadn’t been lived in for years, so it was quite full-on.’
Apart from a few mature trees the garden was a blank canvas, but at one and a half acres it was full of potential. ‘We started by designing the big border to the right of the house, which is 30m wide in places, and planted it with shrubs and perennials,’ Rober t says. ‘Then we started gradually moving across the garden, doing it piece by piece. Fortunately we’d kept lots of plants from our previous garden when we moved here a decade ago, and we divided them and took cuttings, which gave us some plants to get us started.’
The Bailey- Scotts were also lucky with the soil, as Robert acknowledges. ‘It’s absolutely fantastic, and we compost everything so we can improve it even further,’
The different areas in the garden include a wildlife pond, a bog garden, a ‘hot’ border for late summer, and a shade garden. ‘It’s impossible to choose our favourite plants, but at the moment it’s the echinacea, veronicastrum, ornamental grasses, monardas, heleniums and leucanthemums,’ says Robert, who also mentions another favourite – the magnificent mulberry tree at the centre of the garden. ‘It fruits some years and not others, but when there is fruit it’s amazing and I make lots of mulberry gin – a variation on sloe gin – with it.’
The wildlife pond was dug out by hand and the couple put moisture- loving plants in the boggy areas on either side of it. The pond has proved a real magnet for wildlife, attracting frogs, newts, toads and damselflies.
Beyond the main flower borders are four annual flower meadows, separated by grass pathways. Here Claire and Robert have planted cornf lowers, corncockles, corn marigolds and poppies. ‘In early summer, when it’s in f lower, it looks absolutely fantastic,’ says Robert. To one side of the meadows is an orchard; on the other side are six raised vegetable beds.
Growing the produce is Claire’s depa r tment , and thanks to her efforts they are self- sufficient in fruit and vegetables for 11 months of the year. ‘We grow everything from raspberries and currants to asparagus, celeriac and marrows,’ says Robert. ‘ When I come home from work I go out into the garden and pick whatever I fancy for dinner. Claire’s rows of vegetables are so precise that the competition judges asked if she was an engineer by training!’
The Bailey-Scotts spend all their
spare time in the garden. ‘Your stresses just fade away when you’re engrossed in a gardening project,’ says Claire. ‘When we get home after a long day we pop outside to do the watering or pick some tomatoes, and before we know it we’ve been out there for three hours.’