Over the hills and far away

It has taken decades of patience and dedication to create a garden from what had been a working farm in unspoilt Marcher country, reveals George Plumptre

- George Plumptre

The garden of Hurdley Hall, near Churchstoke, Montgomeryshire The home of Simon Quin and Simon Cain

THE story of the garden at Hurdley Hall will be familiar to anyone who has created a country garden themselves. It will also be reassuring to anyone who has thought of doing this, but found the prospect too daunting. Through two decades, from 2001, Simon Quin and Simon Cain have transformed the surroundings of Hurdley Hall, a traditional black-and-white timbered farmhouse that dates from the 17th century. It once stood at the centre of a working farm, with a grazing right up to the front door and a jumble of miscellaneous farm outbuildings, small yards, and a rough meadow where the garden is today.

Hurdley sits in a small bump of Montgomeryshire that juts into neighbouring Shropshire. It is unspoilt, hilly, Marcher land, but not easy conditions for gardening with heavy clay soil, cold winters, high rainfall, and low average daily temperatures and hours of sunlight. Over the years, Mr. Cain and Mr. Quin have overcome this patiently, coming to understand and work with the conditions. As Mr. Cain says: 'There was no grand plan, we have done it ourselves, piece by piece.'

Initially, they bought the house and a surrounding triangle of two acres, most of which lay behind the house. They thought it made sense to start on the entrance front, where there was sloping tarmac up to the porch and rubble everywhere. For the construction of key elements, the most valuable commodity was the limitless supply of stone that was lying around and was soon put to good use. The sloping tarmac was replaced with a series of three small terraces, which they constructed with low retaining walls.