Patrick Grant begins a replanting odyssey

I bought a wreck. I should have bought a nice little cottage that needed a lick of paint and maybe a new loo, but instead I bought a derelict 17th-century gentry house with large parts of the roof in the upstairs bedrooms, and half the downstairs floor in the cellar. The garden — which a century ago had been a lovingly tended thing of beauty — had after years of neglect become a head-high tangle of bramble and nettle, its once beautiful outbuildings now little more than piles of stones.

The Grade II-listed house sits just into North Yorkshire, roughly at the boundary between the Yorkshire Dales National Park and the Forest of Bowland National Landscape. Originally built in 1690, it had a semi-formal garden of close to an acre at the front, walled to the north and west protecting it from the worst of the prevailing wind, the southerly edge being bordered by a simple ha-ha.

Built into the garden walls are a series of stone buildings; potting and tool sheds, a dog kennel with an ornate cast-iron run, and what remains of a heated glasshouse, its glazing and woodwork long since perished. Behind the house are a handful of old barns and a small cottage that rather charmingly was once home, from the mid-1940s to the mid-1950s, to a local potholing society. Its archives give details of the accommodations, including the treacherous long-drop loo, and include photographs of various members in their tweed suits leaning on bunk beds or drying rope ladders on the drive.

A postcard, postmarked 1904, showing the house and front garden, in glorious Gertrude Jekyll style, popped up on a local Facebook group, a wonderful glimpse into the house’s past, and a neighbour told me that until the 1950s the garden was much admired locally. But in 1954 the house was sold to a local farmer who took little interest in it beyond its ability to house cows. And then, from the late 1990s, the house lay empty, the garden falling completely into ruin.

Gardening has always been a big part of my family’s life. My dad, over the course of about 25 years, developed an incredible organic veg garden at his house in the Scottish Borders, and my mum’s beautiful garden in Edinburgh gives her enormous satisfaction and pleasure. In my early twenties I worked as a landscape gardener in the Rocky Mountains for a summer, and later in my twenties, toying with the idea of retraining as a gardener, I’d spend weeks foostering about in the flower beds and sleeping in barns at one of the National Trust’s gardens on their wonderful working holidays.

I studied meadow gardening with the great Fergus Garrett at Great Dixter, in East Sussex, and, as a postgrad student in my early thirties, I kept an allotment. I built myself a wabi-sabi shed from salvaged bits of old sheds and bits of pallet which I painted a fetching cornflower blue (I’ve always been keen to reuse and recycle).

But between renting and living in flats, my only previous garden of my own was at the tiny cottage in Great Tew I shared with my ex-girlfriend. It was barely a dozen metres long by three metres wide. I nevertheless created a pretty and tranquil garden which gave us great pleasure.

I had always longed for a good-sized plot, and one of the things that drew me most to the pile of rubble that was my North Yorkshire house was its almost two acres of unintentionally rewilded garden. I would have been very happy to have moved into a house with a lovely established garden but there’s something thrilling about being able to start almost from scratch. Almost, because the house, the walls and outbuildings, the barns and the ha-ha provide a starting structure.

I would have been happy with a lovely established garden but there’s something thrilling about being able to start almost from scratch

As do the trees: five huge sycamores, a glorious beech, a handful of cherries and crab apples and other smaller trees, and in the field in front a wonderful 400-year-old ash, known to us as the lung tree after its broncheolic structure, all of which frame and punctuate the views of the limestone cliffs to the north, the stone-walled pastures to the south and the Bowland Fells to the west. 

Inspired by the painterly vision of Gertrude Jekyll and William Robinson, a plan is forming in my mind. But advised by Trevor Nicholson, head gardener at nearby Harewood House, I’m taking my time to get to know the garden, walking through it, sitting in it, learning how the sun plays at different times of the day, and year.

I’m also taking time to understand the wildlife: the stoat, kestrel, barn owl, woodpeckers, curlews, oystercatchers, hundreds of small birds, rabbits, harvest mice and voles all live here too (although I wouldn’t be too sad if the rabbits decided to eff off). I want wildlife to thrive here so the garden I create, and how I build it, needs to be mindful of their needs too. 

But before I can even begin to think about planting, I need to start by clearing those brambles.

A few years ago I was invited to the soon-to-be-opening RHS Garden Bridgewater in Salford during its construction. Much of its 154 acres was overgrown, a barely penetrable jungle. But rather than resort to chemicals and powered machinery to clear and turn the soil, they turned instead to nature’s rotavator and weed clearer, the humble porker. 

Men and pigs have been rubbing along together for millennia. Wild boar formed an important part of our diet during our hunter-gatherer days, but from the time they were domesticated, some 10,000 years ago, they were more important to us than simply a source of meat. Roman armies would swear oaths on a pig or piglet. In some parts of medieval England, where commoners were banned from keeping big dogs (notably the New Forest), pigs were trained as pointers and retrievers by poachers. The Domesday Book measured the size of woodlands by the number of pigs they could support.

And because they’d happily chomp almost anything, pigs were deployed as early street cleaners. In the 19th century, genteel city folk got so annoyed by the numbers of pigs roaming about it became common for leases to specifically preclude their keeping (some arcane Edinburgh leases still contain no-pig clauses). 

Today, we’re rediscovering their usefulness in woodland conservation work, using them (as was the case at Bridgewater) to remove invasive species like nettle, bramble, bracken, willow and couch grass, thinning saplings, reducing the density of the ground cover, helping to regenerate soil, and improve habitats for other wildlife. 

There had originally been talk of sausages, but within 24 hours of their arrival it had been agreed we’d never utter the ‘S’ word again

After seven decades of neglect, my garden, overrun with nettle and bramble, needs pigs. I discussed it with my neighbours Pete and Rona, proper farmers, and active wildlife conservationists. Rona is the fourth generation of her family to farm, at their property on the northern edge of the Forest of Bowland (her dad had bred pigs in his teens, and as kids they’d had a large white pig called Soda, brought home from auction by her grandad), and we eventually agreed to co-parent a pair of beautiful Oxford Sandy and Blacks (also known as the Oxford Forest Pig), four-month-old sisters who we named Acorn (sandy) and Hazel (black).

There had originally been talk of sausages, but within 24 hours of their arrival it had been agreed we’d never utter the “S” word again. They are adorable; inquisitive — they like a nibble on your clothes and shoes, and are very keen to know what’s out there beyond the walls (they’ve only escaped once); playful — they’ll chase you round the garden and do proper zoomies; and strangely house-proud — they keep every part of their space in very orderly fashion, one area for sleeping, one for wallowing, one for going to the loo, and they even like to take little trinkets (bits of rope, other objects they dig up) to their sleeping quarters.

They love a carrot, an apple — but a whole pepper was summarily rejected. And they really love a scratching, becoming completely immobilised by a tickle in the right spot (under the armpit); Hazel enters a trance-like state, full stretch, chin up, eyes shut, before rolling over in slow motion for a tummy rub.

But most importantly, our girls have taken to rooting like a couple of old pros. The small croft that has been their home these first weeks is now well and truly weeded, and if they don’t lose their appetite it looks like my front garden at least should be bramble free by winter.

Patrick Grant is the founder of Community Clothing, a judge on BBC television’s “The Great British Sewing Bee” and author of “Less” (HarperCollins)

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