Nant y Bedd
Fantastic open garden in the Brecon Beacons - RHS Partner Garden of the Year 2022
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Gardens and nature in the landscape of the Grwyne Fawr This day out centres on the picturesque and peaceful upper Grwyne Fawr valley which is deep in the heart of the Black Mountains, running parallel to the Llanthony valley but often over-looked. A hidden gem. This itinerary suggests 3 options for the morning followed by a visit to Nant-y-bedd Garden in the afternoon. The options allow for weather, levels of fitness and seasonal interest. This… Read More
Why did you choose to garden here? Well, it wasn’t quite like that. Sue came here with her late husband (also called Ian) when he was posted here by the Forestry Commission. In those days the house came with the job and most forestry workers lived where they worked. 1200 feet up a Welsh mountain isn’t probably the obvious choice for developing a garden! How long have you been here? Sue came… Read More
Quite a lot actually. The hydro has 5 days to go in this quarter and it is already our highest single quarter of generation since we started in 2012. So in my book, that makes it the wettest quarter for 6 years and that doesn’t take into account all the additional rainwater that couldn’t fit into the turbine’s 3kWh limit. Look how much is ‘going to waste’ here! Sue has been manfully… Read More
We were very lucky last week to have a wonderful documentary film-maker staying with us. By some sort of serendipity she phoned us looking for somewhere to stay in the area whilst she did some film editing and looked at a property she was interested in. So we offered her the use of the garden room in return for making a short video for us. Sophie Windsor Clive, for that is her… Read More
No, that’s not a spelling mistake in the title. We’re talking here about beech trees in the dingle, not lovely sandy stretches in the Bahamas. The big snow of just before Christmas, knocked quite a few branches off trees, particularly some of the conifers in the garden, but nothing too catastrophic. It was only when I went up to clear the pond pipe and check the hydro intake, that I saw it…. Read More
Bringing foliage, berries, cones and seed heads indoors from the forest and garden is a tradition which sometimes gets forgotten amidst the flashing, multi-coloured lights, revolving (revolting?) Santas, talking reindeer and other “bling” which so-called Garden Centres seem to wish upon us. Not at Nant-y-Bedd. I like to trim our own holly trees just before Christmas to provide sprigs for a traditional holly wreath – cotoneaster berries this year as the birds… Read More
Yes, it’s Keat’s time of year again, with the autumn fruit lighting up the misty mornings. Depending on who you talk to this summer has been: hot / dry / cold / damp / lovely /grotty – so it’s nice to see some real rewards despite the weather. The early fruit did quite well, with strawberries overcoming a cold damp spell, which seemed to really suit the raspberries. Possibly the best crop… Read More
Driven indoors by a sudden and dramatic thunderstorm, I am now making jam – a satisfying September-during-a-thunderstorm kind of activity. I should mention that jam-making is taking place on a wood-fuelled cooker so no worries about power cuts affecting the process. Plum jam this time. This follows successful batches of blackcurrant and blackcurrant-and-worcesterberry when those crops were harvested several weeks ago. I never make strawberry jam: it seems a crime not to… Read More
We have an interesting relationship with our garden and the plants in it. Sometimes we introduce a plant – it may be a gift from a friend, seeds collected on holiday, or an impulse buy – and it loves our garden, thrives and reproduces itself and feels thoroughly at home. Examples are Lysimachia ‘Firecracker’ (can’t remember where I got this from originally – but it out-competes ground elder so is a real… Read More
We all know how it is when we’re so close to something that we don’t really see it as others do. So it was a great pleasure last week to welcome professional photographer Jonathan Need to our garden. Jonathan seemed instantly to understand the philosophy behind the garden and the planting and has very kindly sent us a wonderful selection of his morning’s shoot. We’ll split the shots into two blogs; this… Read More
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