Work in the new Torc garden commenced in 2020 after the purchase of agricultural land adjoining the existing garden. The new garden is designed to take advantage of the view of the nearby church and consists of two huge borders with wraparound pathways that lead the viewer on a journey of colour, exciting plant combinations and a connection to insects in a garden that is both dynamic and engaging.

The torc itself is a mound of sculpted earth laid out in the shape of a Torc which is a Celtic neck ornament, open at one end. Once inside the Torc shape the visitor is immersed in an experience of plants and insects, scent and colour, the Torc itself wrapping around the visitor like a hug. It is an area designed to connect with self and nature, the two entwined and one.

Like the existing inner garden, the Torc garden has been created without the use of chemicals, carefully respecting nature and the spirit of the land itself. The areas converted to borders and pathways were marked out in situ in the existing pasture, and then with the use of a mini digger carefully turning the topsoil, essentially turning the sod over and burying the existing top layer of grasses and other plants. The months that followed were months of hand picking and hoeing all the little juvenile plants like docks and nettles that were part of the seed bank in the soil waiting for their time to germinate. Over the next few summer months seedlings appeared and were removed. Less and less of these plants germinated and as they did, they were weeded out, and by the autumn the exciting part could commence, the planting.

In Late summer 2021 work commenced on creating a meadow at the rear of the Torc, with the intention being of working with what was already there; an area of pasture that had in it a selection of grasses and some wildflowers, even Cardamine pratensis, or Lady’s smock. This new meadow at the time of writing is cut short like a lawn and many plug plants of native and non-native plants have been planted, lots of bulbs and seeds of yellow rattle to help weaken the grass species. that is not a traditional meadow but a reimagined one, a marriage between the creativity of the gardener and the intentions of mother nature.