A Garden fit for Fairies.

In 1959 Mary Benger and her husband John moved to Burrow Farm near Dalwood in Devon. Whilst her husband built up a dairy herd Mary started to make a garden round the house. With four children to care for time was limited but what had started as a hobby became an absorbing occupation and she planned to create a garden she could open to the public. She extended it to the old Roman clay pit which was full of brambles, nettles and fallen trees.

The first years were taken with clearing scrub and planting trees and shrubs and eventually in 1993 they replaced the existing bungalow with a house and added the Courtyard Garden and Terrace Garden. The planting has always been informal with old roses, geraniums and herbaceous plants and the Pergola Walk was the first area with a formal design.

The Millennium was marked with a special garden which took two years to create and a lake was dug later that year with the planting of azaleas and similar plants. A summer house was built in 2002 and a craft shop and lecture room in 2006. Another garden has recently been created to celebrate their fifty years at Burrow Farm.

The garden covers ten acres but as John and Mary own 35 acres I suspect it will continue to grow. I particularly liked the mix of wild and cultivated flowers and enjoyed wandering round with no-one else around , getting lost, scaling little hills and dropping into dales and wondering where the fairies were hiding. I know they were there.