Blending Ancient And Modern

Christina shand’s magical garden lights up at this time of year with a multitude of blooms as bright and bold as the vivid pink house at its heart.

Christina Shand’s uncompromisingly pink house expresses a love of colour that can also be seen woven throughout the equally bold and brilliant garden that unfurls around it. In this wild spot between the Preseli Hills and the Pembrokeshire coast she has made a garden full of exuberant planting, which is quite an achievement on a site with little topsoil, an abundance of rock, and areas of marsh and bog.

When Christina moved here in 1994, looking for somewhere to build a new life with her two young children, a muddy lane led to the near-derelict house standing in land covered with a dense blanket of perennial weeds. ‘I liked the place because of the light and its proximity to the sea,’ says Christina, and after spending two years making the house habitable she set to work outside.

‘At first, I just wanted an ornamental garden at the front and a domestic space at the back to grow food, dry washing and sit in the setting sun, but I’d brought masses of plants from my previous garden and they needed planting out.’ Scented azaleas and acers found a home on the steep rocky bank along the drive at the front of the house. Then, bit by bit, Christina pushed further and further into the wild parts of her garden as more areas were cleared to find homes for her containerised plants.