Call me a bit new age hippy, but the Bottom Garden just has a beautiful vibe man! Even in it's completely wild and overgrown state I would often fight my way down to the very bottom of the garden at the end of the day with a beer to sit and enjoy the tranquility and the birdsong.
I think I said in the introduction that the Bottom Garden was one of the reasons that I wanted to buy the house. It was in a shocking state, downright dangerous in places as it had been used as a dumping ground with abandoned furniture, rusting metalwork everywhere and so much old broken glass!
The ground was very uneven and covered in ivy and old branches everywhere - in the early days you really needed to have your wits about you going down there. But I loved it. More than one evening I took my guitar and a beer down there to just enjoy the very special atmosphere. Whatever plans I developed needed to keep that atmosphere.
Here's a reminder of how the Top and Bottom Gardens are arranged. Where you enter into the Bottom Garden, it begins to widen out considerably, until it is ultimately almost twice as wide as the Top Garden. The first half is fairly steeply sloped, dropping around 5 feet, before reaching the fairly flat second half.
Beyond the slate wall southern boundary is a "no-man's land" belonging to a neighbouring house. This is about 4 or 5 feet lower than the Bottom Garden and has been left fairly wild. It's a bit like an open glade in a wood.
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| Looking back into Bottom Garden from No-Man's Land |
Beyond the "no-man's land" is the abandoned and heavily overgrown Anglesey Central Railway. This railway was closed to passengers in 1964 as part of the Beeching cuts, but continued to operate for freight until 1992, serving the Associated Octel chemical works in Port Amlwch.
The route has since been disused, though plans and feasibility studies have been proposed for its potential reopening as a heritage or regular passenger line and a local group has a long lease to try and achieve that, although it seems a very big task to me and I can't see it ever happening. Sustrans has also expressed an interest in turning it into a leisure cycling / Walking route between Amlwch and Llangefni but the heritage railway group won't even discuss it, which seems a shame.
I think that it is probably at least 20 years and probably considerably more since anyone has actively looked after the Bottom Garden. All of the plants down there were very overgrown and lanky from fighting to get light.
A number of sycamores looked like they had at some point been chopped down, but then grown suckers and gone completely out of control. The two biggest each had 7 or 8 individual trunks varying between around 8" and 14" diameter. One was around 25 feet tall and the other probably 40 feet. I think there were 5 altogether including the smaller ones, which were maybe 15 - 20 feet tall! Then there were 4 or 5 sapling sized that had obviously self seeded.
These photos were taken after a lot of clearance had been done (and a shed built!) but show how big they were, even when the leaves had dropped.
In 3 corners of the bottom garden are 3 holly trees, again very overgrown and around 25 - 30 feet tall. Then there were a couple of smaller trees - hawthorn and one that I haven't yet identified! Bizarrely, there was a screen of about 10 feet tall bamboo. The tangle of fallen enormous canes were a real hazard that caught me out every time I went near them!
The effect of all of these overgrown trees was to provide dense shade once spring came. The floor and trunks of the trees was smothered with thick ivy, preventing any other growth at ground level.
It was all lovely in its own way, but too dangerous to use in its current form.
So my initial thoughts for the Bottom Garden were developed around 3 "main themes":
- Preserving the beautiful natural atmosphere of the far end.
- Dealing with the need to support and safely get down the steep transition area.
- Provide somewhere to grow fruit and vegetables.
This was the early masterplan. I labelled the flat area "Birds, Bees and Butterflies and saw it as very much a place to relax with a summer house in a wild flower meadow and space to put a hammock, fire pit and even a tent if anyone fancied camping down there!!
The sloping area was labelled "allotment" and I envisaged using raised bed structures incorporating steps between them to deal with the change of levels. It also incorporated a shed and compost area and I was originally planning on probably having a small greenhouse in the Top Garden. Over time I thought that it would be better having the greenhouse in the Bottom Garden.
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