Chapter 1, At the Front Door
Entering at the gate, the path meanders in a lovely curve through gorgeous cottage style planting, leading you to the front door.
This seemed the obvious place to begin, because if this garden was to feel like Bridge Farm it needed, above all else, to feel inhabited.
Bridge Farm has always been about family. Pat and Tony Archer were pioneers of organic farming long before it became commonplace, determinedly proving that farming could work in harmony with nature. Their children have inherited not just the business, but their parents' values. Helen has transformed the dairy into an award-winning enterprise, while Tom and Natasha continue to grow Bridge Fresh, the vegetable box scheme they began during lock-down and which has become an important part of the farm today. Around them are the next generation: Henry and Jack, Seren and Nova; growing up amongst vegetables, orchards, muddy paths and the reassuring rhythms of farm life.
How do you show all of that without a single person standing in the garden? The answer, rather wonderfully, turned out to be wellington boots.
A collection of boots waiting patiently by the front door instantly suggests a busy household. Tiny boots beside much larger ones. Grandchildren arriving after school. Someone nipping out to pick beans. Someone else heading off to feed the goats or cut flowers for the house. Without saying a word, they tell you that several generations pass through this doorway every day.
Finding that door became a little quest of its own. We'd almost settled on one reclaimed door before our brilliant landscaper Ryan discovered an even better one. I painted it in Farrow & Ball's Blue Ground, a quiet nod to Tony's beloved Fordson Major tractor, while behind the glass hangs a vintage Sanderson curtain that I'd found months earlier at Heathfield Antiques & Collectables Market.
Jo Thompson had imagined a beautiful climbing rose scrambling over the porch, and beside the door a generous hanging basket softens the entrance. It feels as though someone has just stepped inside to put the kettle on.
Hanging from the door handle is a small handwritten slate that simply reads, "We're in the garden." It makes me smile every time I see it. Such an ordinary message, and yet it suggests so much. Perhaps Pat is cutting flowers, Tony is inspecting the vegetables, Helen has wandered over from the dairy, Tom is loading Bridge Fresh boxes, or the grandchildren have disappeared into the orchard. It leaves you with the lovely feeling that if you do wander through the gate, you might bump into any one of them.
Dear reader, a small confession. Jo Thompson is quietly campaigning for the return of the hanging basket! I must admit, she may just have converted me. Planted generously and allowed to tumble and trail, it lends such warmth to a front door. Here, overflowing beside the climbing rose, it completes the picture perfectly. My only hesitation is the watering. Hanging baskets have an uncanny knack of demanding attention just when you're about to leave the house. I suspect the answer lies in choosing beautiful, drought-tolerant planting... another lesson I've learnt from Jo..
On the bench sit Pat's jars of homemade jam, ready to make their way across to the Orchard Tea Room. They're finished simply in recycled fabric remnants, tied with string and finished with handwritten labels. Beside them are freshly gathered sweet peas from the cutting garden, while a salt-glazed pot waits to be scooped up with flowers for the tea room tables.
Leaning against the porch are Tony's faithful spade and fork. They've been abandoned, just for a moment, after planting the newly introduced rose, Tottering-by-Gently, a small celebration of his seventy-fifth birthday that devoted listeners to The Archers will already know about.
None of these objects is particularly remarkable on its own. But together they suggest something much more valuable than beautiful styling. They hint at lives being lived. At people constantly coming and going. At children running in from the garden. At someone remembering they've left the secateurs outside. At Pat carrying flowers indoors. At Tony stopping for a cup of tea before heading back out again.
That was always the ambition. Simply to make visitors believe that, if they knocked on the door, someone from Bridge Farm might answer.
