By the Water's Edge

The ingredients were unpromising, but the owner of this garden in Dorset has transformed the formerly boggy, clay-filled space into a quintessential country idyll, complete with stream and wildlife ponds.

- Caroline Beck

When Tina Wright bought this spacious 1860s rectory in a Dorset village near Shaftesbury in 2001, one of many appealing aspects was the blank canvas that the two-acre lawned garden presented. Unfortunately, she soon discovered all was not quite as bucolic as it seemed. The garden is situated on thick clay and a good third of it is very boggy, especially in the winter months. “You dig down and, before long, you’ve reached soil of a bluey colour,” she remarks. However, as a lecturer in electronics, Tina relishes problem solving and she set about making a virtue of necessity, capitalising on, rather than fighting, what nature had given her.