About

We first visited Orkney in 1994. I worked as a freelance editorial photographer for the book and magazine market and had caught by accident a few minutes of a program where the author Will Self was being filmed in black and white with the Orkney landscape behind him. I remember thinking, wow, I want to go there. We came that June and spent almost four weeks here, mostly on Mainland and the linked isles but also spending time on Sanday, Westray and Wyre. Hoy was photographed from a distance, an image of the hills of Hoy taken from Stromness on the Orkney mainland was one of the first to sell, little did we know that 19 years later the island of Hoy would become home.

It took a while for the seed that the trip had secretly sown to germinate. We visited more over the years and in 2007 two days into a trip to Hoy without any advice or survey we made an offer on a small and uninhabitable house, no heating, earth floors and a roof that leaked like a sieve. As we drove onto the ferry ramp to return home to Yorkshire the estate agent rang to say our offer had been accepted.

With the help of Graham, a brilliant local builder, the house was reroofed and extended, once Graham had finished the major building works we took over the internal work. For the next few years every holiday or spare week was spent in Orkney, plaster boarding and painting, relaying stone floors, fitting a kitchen and bathroom.

In November of 2013 we left our East Yorkshire home of 28 years and moved permanently to Orkney, arriving on bonfire night in the teeth of a gale. Five years later having realised we had outgrown the garden and wanting more space we moved again, this time three miles rather than five hundred. Home now is a small ex croft house that came with around eight acres of land, an exposed site, the land a mix of moor and grassland. The house had been empty for two years. The garden, chest high in brambles, untouched for much longer than that. The plan was and is to create a human and wildlife friendly Summer garden whilst managing the remaining areas for nature.

The garden in five years has been transformed, Jacqui sowing her magic and making plants thrive on an exposed edge of moorland site of poor thin soil. Insect and Bee friendly it has gone from a tangle of bramble to a cottage (or croft) garden full of colour in five short Summers.

The project continues, a meadow between the house and shore is being reinstated. Wildlife ponds have been dug. Dry-stone dykes rebuilt. An essential shelter belt of Alder planted five years ago has matured enough to give some shelter, many more trees are yet to be planted, a small woodland of Rowan and Downy Birch high on the to do list for a corner of the moor.

This blog is about a garden on an island in the far North of Scotland but also about a meadow, a moor and the wider landscape of Hoy.

We hope you enjoy it.