At The Sustainable Garden we’re doing our bit to help the planet by putting the natural world front and centre of everything we do. We can show you how to do so too, through consultancy and private tours which will help you to create an ecologically friendly, sustainable garden or estate of your own.
The Sustainable Garden is in the peaceful south Devon countryside on the site of an ancient farm with its original cider-apple orchards and a hay meadow. Since she arrived here in 2015 the garden’s founder, Charlotte Parton, has gradually turned it into a beautiful biodiverse haven for plants and wildlife.
Drawing on many years experience in horticulture, design, nutrition and sustainability Charlotte has established several diverse habitats to enhance the flora and fauna, including grasslands and meadows of colourful wildflowers; a nature pond; multi-species hedgerows, and many types of native trees.
This is also the site of The English Potager Garden, which Charlotte designed to grow food in a beautiful yet ecological way, with fruit and vegetables thriving among protective companion herbs and flowers.
You can see the development from scratch of Charlotte’s pond and wildflower meadow here, on the Moor Meadows website.
Renown local ecologist John Walters has said of The Sustainable Garden: “The grassland and orchard habitat has been untouched by intensive management and is being sympathetically managed for wildlife. It is an oasis that retains the rich diversity of insect life including grasshoppers and wild bees that has vanished from much of the surrounding landscape.”
So if you’re interested in making a garden that better supports a rich diversity of flora and fauna but don’t know where to start; or you need help in creating specific features such as a wildflower meadow, a nature pond or a pretty Potager garden, please look at the CONSULTANCY page for more information.
If you would like to visit for a private guided tour of The Sustainable Garden please see the CONTACT page for details on location, pricing and how to book your visit.
About Charlotte Parton
Having grown up in Africa, Charlotte graduated from Bristol University with a languages degree and spent the early part of her career traveling the Spanish-speaking world for her job in the TV industry.
A love of gardening eventually led her to change path and re-train at Capel Manor College in London where she gained her RHS certification and a Distinction in Horticulture and Garden Design.
She started her own design and landscaping company in 2006 and created many beautiful small gardens over the next ten years.
During this time Charlotte also qualified as a nutritional therapist at the College of Naturopathic Medicine in London and became increasingly concerned about the detrimental effects to human health from pesticides, chemical fertilisers, plastics, and a lack of essential vitamins and minerals.
This led to a desire to grow her own food in a way that would provide maximum nutrition with the minimum negative impact on the planet.
Moving from London to Devon in 2015 she studied various methods of ecological gardening and sustainable food production, from permaculture to biodynamics, companion planting to no-dig techniques and combined many of these principles with her other skills when she came to create her own smallholding.
Charlotte’s background in design, and appreciation for attractive ways to grow vegetables, led her to her passion for Potager gardens. She realised this old method combined the beauty she was looking for with an effective way to produce food sustainably.
Creating wildlife-friendly areas with ponds and wildflowers, hedgerows and native trees around the potager further increased both the biodiversity and productivity of the vegetable and fruit garden.
Recently she gained a Post Graduate Diploma with Distinction in Sustainable Food and Natural Resources from Liverpool John Moores University/ CAT.
The Sustainable Garden is the result of Charlotte’s passion and experience in creating beautiful gardens that support happy humans and happy wildlife. It’s a beautiful, biodiverse, productive smallholding and we hope it’ll inspire to create a happy, healthy, beautiful garden of your own.
