Set around its picture postcard thatched cottage, this wildlife-friendly garden has been 20 years in the making, and is a true labour of love for John and Jenny Van de Pette
There is never a shortage of visitors to the garden behind John and Jenny Van de Pette’s 400-year-old thatched cottage in Hampshire. From swans and ducks to otters and water voles, it is a rare day indeed when a walk around the two-and-a-half acre plot doesn’t result in a wild encounter. This daily dose of nature is a just reward for the couple’s years of hard work reclaiming their garden from the brambles and nettles that had taken hold before their arrival; not to mention the World War IIaged lorry parked on the vegetable patch that required the attention of an angle grinder before it could be persuaded to leave its resting place.
From the very start, John and Jenny could see that their outside space was rich in watery habitats, whether this was the Pillhill Brook that runs past their home and under the nearby bridge, from which their cottage takes its name, or the large lake dug within the old water meadow by a former owner. Yet it took several months of hard work before they were able to appreciate the full extent of their plot, including its mature trees, orchard and vegetable garden.
‘When we came here the house was a bit of a mess, having been unoccupied for more than 15 months, and the garden was so overgrown that it took months of clearing before we could see that our actual boundary was at least 40 feet further back,’ explains Jenny. ‘We could see the potential of what we could do with it; taking something and making it nice. It’s been a long-term project getting things to where they are now.’
The couple moved to Hampshire from Surrey, where John had been a doctor at Frimley Park, and this meant settling into different jobs as well as a new home. ‘You could say it was a bit of a mid-life crisis,’ says John, who went on to work at the Royal Hampshire Hospital. ‘We wanted to be somewhere different, where we would find a more village-like atmosphere.
‘It was the water that attracted us to this property: the lake and the lovely chalk stream where trout swim, which was once a mill race. Chalk streams are a rare habitat, with their pure water coming from underground aquifers. The Pillhill Brook rises near Fyfield and flows through to Upper Clatford, near where it joins the River Anton, which in turn then connects with the River Test,’ John adds.
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