An abundant, resilient garden conjured out of a concrete farmyard in Wiltshire by Sheila Jack

The project gave Sheila the opportunity to put her sustainable principles into practice – from the reusing and local sourcing of materials to creating hardy plantings

By Clare Coulson

9 September 2025

A path of stone pitchers runs the length of the garden drawing the eye to a mature oak beyond the boundary. Grasses and...

From the interior of garden designer Sheila Jack’s barn conversion in Wiltshire, every view of the garden is a carefully considered vignette. From the cosy living space, the eye travels out to a square bed centred with a sleek reflective water tank surrounded by Hylotelephium ‘Matrona’, Echinacea pallida, the flushed red foliage of Imperata cylindrica ‘Red Baron’ and the seedheads of Dianthus carthusianorum swaying on wiry stems.

From the kitchen window, an elegant stepped lawn, edged with borders of Sesleria autumnalis, clipped yew domes and four multi-stem Malus ‘Evereste’ crab apple trees segues gently into a cloud-pruned yew hedge and the surrounding fields. And from the vantage point of the bath, a large picture window frames a distinctive textural combination of arching Molinia ‘Transparent’, the umbellifer Selinum wallichianum, spiky Eryngium yuccifolium and spires of dark-stemmed pale lilac Nepeta nuda ‘Romany Dusk’ and Agastache ‘Blue Fortune’.

The chance to include such carefully considered details is one of the upsides of designing a new garden concurrently with a renovation project. Sheila and her husband Paul Barnes bought the ‘wreck’ at auction in 2018 and worked with James Grayley architects to reinvent the old building, while retaining its atmosphere. The outside space was an unprepossessing concrete farmyard on an awkward, triangular and sloping site, so Sheila broke up the shape with a series of paths and borders that harmonise with the sections of the larch-clad house. ‘I was keen to take the emphasis off the skinniness and lead you out into the landscape,’ she explains. ‘We added a simple post-and-wire fence that would be transparent – it was not about putting up a barrier but more about framing the countryside.’

Stachys byzantina ‘Silver Carpet with Hylotelephium ‘Matrona.

A central stone-pitcher axial path through the length of the garden maximises the view towards a mature oak tree that stands beyond the boundary. On either side of the path, steel-edged beds are planted for year-round interest, starting with swathes of bulbs in spring, but peaking in autumn with highly textural grasses including Pennisetum alopecuroides ‘Red Head’ and Calamagrostis brachytricha. These are contrasted with late-flowering perennials, all selected for their ability to hold their forms through winter: agastache, veronicastrum, helenium and amsonia are joined by spikes of Liatris spicata.

At the far end of the garden is an area used for decades by the farmer as a dumping ground. It was hard to imagine anything flourishing there, so Sheila planted it with the toughest plants, including wild roses Rosa canina, R. rubiginosa, R. rugosa and R. moyesii ‘Geranium’ that feel appropriate to the setting, but also create a protective thicket around the boundary. To make the most of the west-facing views from there, a seating area overlooks low and sculptural forms, including clipped mounds of Lonicera nitida, together with Rosa pimpinellifolia, R. glauca and R. x odorata ‘Mutabilis’, with Molinia caerulea ‘Moorhexe’ contributing more late-season colour and texture.

Sustainability is at the heart of this garden. Other than the paved section under the canopy adjacent to the house, all areas are permeable, with paths made using stone pitchers or gravel sourced within a 40-mile radius. Sculptural stone boulders came from a quarry only a mile from the house. Sheila was eager to reduce the amount of waste removed from the site (‘to assuage the guilt of having to take away so much of the old property during the build’). So concrete was cleared, crushed and partly recycled into gabions that provide a retaining wall round a parking area concealed with hornbeam hedging.

The making of the garden was as low impact as possible. ‘We spent the summer of 2021 repeatedly weeding perennial nasties by hand,’ says Sheila, who does not use any chemicals. The clay soil buried under concrete for more than 50 years was lightly decompacted and improved with a low-nutrient, locally sourced mixture of topsoil and coarse sand, and annual mulching. The planting is designed largely with biodiversity in mind (fruiting trees, rosehips and seedheads that are left standing over winter all attract abundant wildlife). A patch of wildflower meadow adds another source of food and habitat for myriad creatures.

From its unprepossessing beginnings, this little slice of Wiltshire has returned to full health. ‘The planting is such a magnet for pollinators,’ observes Sheila. ‘When in flower, the trees and native hedgerow we reinstated are humming with bees and so many forms of insect life. It all feels truly alive’.

Sheila Jack Landscapes: sheilajack.com