First Garden Tour at the Dower House 🌿 | Greenhouse Wins, Orchard Plans & A Big Question!

Hi everyone! 👋
Welcome to our very first garden tour here at the Dower House!
After just 3 years of creating these gardens completely from scratch, we’re so excited to finally take you around and show you what we’ve built, planted, and learned. 🌱✨
In this video, we walk through the working gardens, sharing:
🌼 What we’ve planted and what’s thriving (and what’s not)
🌿 Our favourite plants and seasonal highlights
🍅 A peek inside our beloved greenhouse, where the tomatoes are thriving
💧 Dean reveals a clever irrigation system gadget we’ve been testing
🌳 A look at our orchard — tree species, layout, and future plans
PLUS… we’re asking you — should we bring chickens back to the Dower House? 🐓 Let us know what you think in the comments!

We’re still learning and evolving, and this is just the beginning. If you love gardens, greenhouses, and country life, we’d love to have you along for the journey.

🌿 Don’t forget to like, subscribe, and leave us a comment — we love hearing from you and your tips always help us grow!

#GardenTour #DowerHouse #GreenhouseGardening #OrchardPlans #CountryGarden #HomesteadLife #GardenInspiration #IrrigationSystem #TomatoHarvest #DIYGarden

Hi everyone. It’s time to do a tour of the working gardens here in Da House. I’m going to show you the working gardens. I’m going to show you the orchard and the greenhouse and our future plans. If you’re new here, we did this massive restoration and gardens of not only one but several properties. We are focusing on our house at the moment. And I want to show you this garden that we have created from scratch. Now when we bought this place, this was just lawn and what we wanted to do it was a design a working garden because it would have had the Georgees would have had a working garden. Um we didn’t have brick walls. So we wanted to make create with u hedging these walls to create pockets um and areas but also to stop the wind. We have got very open winds in here. We have struggled with with this hedging in the past. This one is doing well. So, we’re going to keep our fingers crossed that in few years it’s going to be nice and tall and all nice and thick. Our plan within this working garden was three main things. We wanted soft fruit. We want things that we can eat. We want things that grows and we can keep for storage over the winter. And also flowers um because I like my flower arrangements. So we decided to well Dean is an architect in case that you don’t know. So we wanted to make sure that everything is very symmetrical. So what you see in one side is very likely we’re going to have the same in the other side. So when you walk through is not only a walking garden, but it’s nice and it’s a design. So if you come along on this first row, we have got raspberries. Now this is my absolute recommendation of raspberries. This is called golden raspberry and if you have never come across extremely prolific. Um it does a lot of raspberries starting really early on all the way to the autumn and they are very yummy. Our child absolutely loves loves it and he always comes here wants to eat them from the bush straight. So very very nice, very easy to keep. One of the things that you have to keep an eye is that they send runners. So basically from the roots they spread out and then new shoots are coming through. They can come through the grass from other places. You have to keep on top of putting them to make sure that they don’t take over. So we do have four different species. ones are the ones that you basically chop down in the uh in the winter and then the other ones are the ones they grow on the last year’s wood which that’s always more complicated because you’re like it looks messy for a season and I know that Dean likes everything looking very neat and perfect. So this year is not been a year that I am the most happy about the garden just because we’ve been working very hard inside the house. So we haven’t had as much chance to enjoy the garden as we wished. Has just spent 5 hours studying up. I wanted to show you as it was but Dean was like no I’m not having that because that is not how I like my guests to look at my garden. So it’s all nice. He studied up all the bushes and it’s now an wheat free. So, next up on this rose, we have got rhubarb. And I know you’re probably going to be thinking, what is this? What is this? It’s very lovely. We actually bought them just because of the structure. It’s a terra cotta bell and is actually a rub for you can just put a bucket and that will do. So you just put a this forer or something to warm up the crown of the rhubarb before starts the seasoning of growing and it forces it to push the growth and then everything is very tender and it comes up earlier. So that’s what it is in there. We just have them just because they looked very nice and pretty and it’s as well like keeps with the symmetry. You can tell these ones they are different varieties. These ones do extremely well. These rhubops have not done very well. Um or maybe they have it’s just a different variety. So it’s not as like incredibly big as the other ones. And then after that we have got black car, red car, white current, all the currents we have in here. This was the only thing that we were able to save out of this garden. So when it was absolutely when we bought it, it was all grass. There was a big pile of grass clippings which we reused um to put all around the hedging because it was like really good compost. And then they had three random bushes. So these actual ones that we managed to save from the old owners and they’ve done very well. On the opposite side, um Dean got a different species, which I don’t know what they are, but they as well. I think they are still black current, red car stuff, but a different type. Aren’t they? No, no, they’re exactly They’re exactly the same. Well, I think he doesn’t. Yeah. So they he believes they the same but he doesn’t know quite yet. So we haven’t had fruit actually because they grow in all wood I think. I don’t know. I’m not I’m not quite I’m not very good with like with these type of like fruits. I’m better with like onions and all of that. So these upper rows they stay exactly the same all year around every year. Um that is they very easy. We just have to keep on top of the weeds and making sure that we pull all the like all the suckers. Now the next rows is where I’m starting to take over and that’s why they don’t look as perfect as they would like. But uh I want I wanted to make sure there was a mixture of in this case are leaks which this year I’ve left to go to flower because the bees absolutely love them. So much so that they have gone to sit. Now the seat has fallen and there are already lots of seedlings on the floor. On the next row of section, sorry, in the next section, um I’ve got artichokes. These are 3 years old. The problem that I’ve got with the artich chokes I was saying to I don’t know if I want to keep them is we never pull the artich chokes which is like sacrilege because obviously I think the next year I’m going to have to do something but they get so so so big that then you do have to you struggle to kind of like get through them. And then of course are my das which I just love das so much. They just bring me so much joy. This one is the third year because I brought some of these. I I I got them from um I split them, I separate them, I got them from cutings and bees love them and they made me so happy. I do need to dead head. So, this is a full-time job which I didn’t have this year and they have gone a little bit wild. Out of these ones, I always you can see there is a theme with a color and it’s because this is the colors that I do tend to like to put inside as a vase which are like soft pinks, pinks, whites. Um, and but there are some that I like better when it comes to cutting for uh flowers, which is like I like them very upright. They’re easy to cut. Um, so these ones, for example, they’re very impactful, the bigger ones, but they not as good to kind of like have a big sort of like display. The other side is exactly the same. I’ve got a different color. This color I This is just like so so nice. I love it so much. I mean, I’m going to do a closeup of this because it is just it’s like wine. It’s beautiful. One thing that I did I did do this year is I was growing chives um and I had them for a long time and I had them in pots and I decided that I wanted to have all around the circle chives. Chive is one of I think an underrated herb that you use everything. You can use the flowers for arrangements. You can also the flowers are edible and you can eat everything. It’s also like the mangjacks and the wildlife do not touch them. We have learned here which we have got a lot of wildlife because we have got open fields is the mjugs do not like to have onions or chives. Well, they can eat everything but they they don’t seem to like this strong smelling. Now, as we move along to the next rows, I want to say what I wanted to test out this year. In my head, it make a lot of sense, but it hasn’t it hasn’t gone to plan. And is that I wanted to create this. In my head, it was beautiful dividing hedges of things that was going to grow of cosmos. And I thought it was not going to grow this high and it was going to be absolutely packed with flowers. I think that it’s been a big fail because a lot of it has grown so big, but it hasn’t made flowers. So, it’s just very big green and also it’s it’s flopped and it has stopped other things growing. But I had my cosmos which I will be saving seeds. So, you can see there’s a lot of seeds I can already save. You know, just I will give to some friends. I’ve got this is Borash down there which it was very pretty but I will have to pick the uh the seeds as well which actually I did use in Dante’s birthday as arrangements. It was very pretty, very woodlandike. And then this year I’ve also planned echinesia. I am a firm believer that when you don’t feel well, as soon as we start don’t feel well, we have echynatia and I I and we get well, you know. Well, I maybe it’s mentally, but that’s what I do. So, I want to make sure that I’ve got freshia. So, I can make te also the flowers and te. I have to research more, but I’ve got it here. they they have taken so next year we will have a lot of echynatia. Now if we move to the next one this year I’ve decided to plant roses. Now these are roses that I took from cutings years ago from our rose garden in the main estate and I wanted to bring them here because I wanted to start growing them here because in the future we’re going to have a rose garden in here. It’s going to be different to the one that we have in the main estate because I don’t want it as formal. I want to have more informal of roses with other things. And I have separated them with sage which is doing extremely well. I wish there was a way to show you know to pass the smells. This sage is so healthy. The other side is the same. This is the um a different um that is very good with roses and I can’t remember the name. That’s the one that you got me. Um I I’m taking cutings of that in the greenhouse which I forgot about it and I will have to see if some have taken. Um again it works very well with the roses. It helps. We’ve got a little robin following us. And uh it helps you know to kind of like stop like black fly and green fly and all of that. So but one of the problems that we have with the roses is the mjack which they are small deer. If you don’t know where they are, they literally eat the whole roses. So, um I’m getting my This is We do have a watering system set up more sage to separate them. The idea with like I love separation in the beds uh with perennial things. So, in this case with sage, I’ve got this one which is this one is called Queen of Sweden. I really like this rose. It smells amazing and it’s as well very upright which is great for cutting on that over there. I’m interplanting my cosmos with some chart. If you are new at planting, I will say chart is one of the best things to you can plant because it it lasts of the winter. It’s you can use like the leaves at size and it keeps growing, keeps growing, keeps growing. This is my cosmos. I mean, this is what I was imagining it was going to be all like that. Look, it’s full of bees. It’s nice and spacious in between these rows of cosmos. I think you probably can get a good feel from here. We’ve got some celery. So, this was my idea. I didn’t think it was going to be that high, but it was going to be sections, some planting section. This was onions, um, which Dean has pulled up. And then again, I think was I planted more onions there. Same here. These are my marolds. I love, as I say, like the difference, but also like the bees really like it. And if you have got things that bees love, then your crops are much bigger and they much healthier. We’ve got some potatoes here. Um, didn’t just pull these. We had red onions and normal onions. What we do with the onions is we leave them here to dry out with the sun. Then we move them into the uh into the greenhouse so they are further like dried. and then we store them. Luckily for us, we have got a cellar which it can is like nice and dry so we can just move them there and we use them over winter. So that is one of the things that we plan. We forget about them and then we have got a lot of onions to use. And I will say this, you will think but onions are are much cheaper to buy in the supermarket. They are very different how they taste. Actually, everything is very different how it tastes when you grow it at yours that when you buy it from the supermarket. Here is fresh is it is very has got so much flavor. So, you can see here like the difference. I’m going to pick one. This is one of the onions. Look at the size of this compared with the maragles. The marles are much lower. So, a lot of sun has managed to kind of get through. So, it’s grown much bigger. that other onions which were planted by the cosmos and I I didn’t think was going to be this this high, they haven’t done as well. You see the difference. It’s incredible. So, it does show you that what you plan around is so crucial. Um, but I mean these are taller than me. You know, I’m 8 foot. I’m 6 foot. Sorry, not 8 foot. I’m 6′. Forgot to show you this, which is I planted two tomatoes. So, these are two of the tomato plants that we have in here. I wanted to see how well they were doing outside in comparison to the greenhouse, but also if they were going to make it based on the wildlife. This year is all about being testing out because last year and the year before we didn’t have issues with wildlife. So, I think that they now know we plant things and it’s like, oh yeah, it’s like a buffet, you know, let’s come here. So, they have survived. I don’t know if it’s because the cosmos were like growing over it and then sort of like heating it. But let’s show you the greenhouse because we have got so many tomatoes in the greenhouse. So, Bourja was looking all pretty. I am in my dirty clothes because I’ve just tidied that garden for you guys. Um, so I’m going to show you the greenhouse and the reason I’m going to show it because there’s literally one species in here so I can’t get anything wrong. Um, but first up, we have tested out some new irrigation this year, which doesn’t rely on main’s water. So, it’s just a tank or a bucket or a bin full of water and it pumps it with solar, a solar with a solar panel. So, everything is just off-grid. Um, and it waters these plant pots and it has done so well. I’ll show you on the other side the system, but these um these are blueberries. They weren’t doing very well in the main estate. So, we brought them over here and these are all new shoots from this year. It’s unbelievable how much it’s picked up just with the right sort of watering. Just as another little point that it’s like it’s a drip feeder. Even when you have a host pipe ban, you can still use these systems which is great, right? Greenhouse. So, this year we focus predominantly on growing tomatoes, lots of tomatoes. And we’ve we’ve done them in different ways. So, as Bourja said, we planted some outside. Um, we’ve planted some in pots and we planted some in troughs. You can quite visibly see the troughs work so much better. So much so that we’re thinking that next year we’ll be putting troughs all across here as well. Um, anything we plant in these troughs seem to do really well. Um, we last year we planted a lot of um, sort of salads, so like um, lettucees and spinaches and stuff like that. Um, but this year we wanted to go for tomatoes and we have been inundated. I’ve made so many sauces. I’ve been giving it giving tomatoes away and look, we’ve still got loads to pick. Um, what we did do though was we didn’t limit it just to tomatoes in here. We did plant some a few things underneath. We knew that they wouldn’t grow as great because um, they’ll be overshadowed by the tomatoes, but we added a few maragolds here. Um trying to remember what Boura told me about why the maragolds are there. Something to do with protecting the tomatoes. Companion planting. Yes, com companion planting. Um so, so yeah, we’ve done some maragold and we put some carrots in here as well. Now, because of the trough, they’re not very they’re not going to grow very big. Um but look, a little 2-in carrot. Um, but it’s, you know, we were testing it out to see what we could grow in the troughs this this year. Um, we also haven’t spent much time in the garden at all this year. So, this it’s gone a little bit unruly. We really needed to create more of a um sort of a framework up here so the tomatoes could grow because they’ve kind of doubled down on themselves. Um, and we’ve also in on reflection, we kind of like the cherry tomatoes more than the kind of salad tomatoes. Great thing is about growing your own fruit and vegetables. He’s just coming out, you know, any day you want to and just picking picking what you want and it just feels so much fresher. Dante absolutely loves coming in here and picking tomatoes. He will not stop. He doesn’t know when he’s like a Labrador. He doesn’t know when to stop eating. He will just keep eating the tomatoes until there are none left. Um, but yeah, so we’ve done really well with the tomatoes this year. Note to self, they don’t work very well in plant pots or in particular terra cottas because the terra cottas tend to take all the moisture out of the soil. So, it’s quite dry. Look at me. I’m just like such a gardener right now. Um, and then as Bourja mentioned before, we take the onions out. If it’s dry weather, we leave them outside for a bit and then we bring them in here. You’ll see that we’ve got these these drying kind of racks. We try and keep them spaced out because if there’s a rot in one of them, it will rot across all the rest. Um these are um garlics and then underneath we’ve got onions. We’ve got lots of onions this year. I mean, look at the size of that one. It’s ridiculous. Because of the humidity outside when it’s um winter and it’s wet, they’ll go rotten. So, they have to be in a dry space. So, we take them inside. Other things we’ve added in here is we’ve added basil. It’s supposed to change the flavor of the tomatoes, but we haven’t really noticed that really. Um, and so we’ve attempted pots up here. We’ve had our irrigation set up, so it’s not the irrigation that’s the issue, it’s the pots. We’ve also done lowle pots here. This one’s grown a bit better than this one. Maybe it just likes this side. Maybe the the sunlight in the morning is better for it than in the afternoon. I don’t know. Yeah, we do have a sycamore there which shadows the greenhouse a little bit during like high sun, so that may help it. Um, but yeah, so the greenhouse is constantly changing. We slowly adapting to what we think works best in here. We learn every year what works, what doesn’t. We probably won’t plant as many tomatoes next year. For me, I think next year tomatoes on one side and then salads like lettucees and stuff like that. Things that don’t work well outside because they get eaten alive. Um so like um lettucees, spinaches, um lamb’s lettuce, that sort of stuff. We have got another section at the back here which we still haven’t worked through, but let me show you the irrigation system that we’ve got for the pots. So we’ve got two pots there and two pots this side. And we’ve just got a we just got a bin that we’ve got full of water. This is a solar panel. You set it up. This is from Gardina. You set it up with a timer and it just pumps. Um it’s actually simpler than the mains irrigation. It’s crazy. So, uh so yeah, we’re really happy with how that’s turned out. This section has been like this for the past 2 years. Um we’re still aming and of what we’re going to do with it. I even dug a hole about six months ago, which I didn’t fill back in, um to see if I can get um some pipes from the greenhouse down here. And we have a water collection underground, but it’s rock down there. So, I thought we we could dig it by hand, but obviously not. This is going to be a very utilitarian space. We wanted to have um rainwater harvesting, compost area, things we really need for the garden now that we don’t currently have. But I do want to make it look pretty because we see it from different spaces. Let’s take you up to the orchard and we’ll explain to you what fruit trees we planted and what our eventual plan is for that space. [Music] Now this is I know I feel this will end up being the jewel of the garden because we put in the work. Um, every year we planting some bulbs and we want this orchard to be one of these orchards that not only gives you fruit but also you can come here have a picnic, have a chill, you know, like over the uh the years to come. So, we planted plums, pears, apples, and cherries. We wanted to make sure is that we had as established trees as we could afford. This is probably going to be one of those that people will either say like no or yeah, do it. Here by me we have got one of these in really big sort of a Christmas trees. I think it’s a type of sequoia something. It’s an American species of tree and yes it could be very nice in Christmas. Dean wants to keep it. Um I suggested to in the future push the orchard that way. So have more orchard and get rid of it. I like it because it gives structure. So maybe when this matures we’ll do that. I’m not really sure. Now here you can see that over the last two years we have planted over 5,000 bulbs. In the spring is looking amazing. This has been the second year. We planted more last year on sections that we didn’t like how full they were. And I’m hoping that next year is going to be quite incredible. As you can see with the use with this hedging um you probably see oh they nothing. But in our minds, they already fully establish with a big arch. We will put like some sort of like iron gates in here. So then you will open the gates and we’ll go into the orchard. And I think this is a nice thing about gardens, you know, it it takes time, but you can imagine them how they will be. You separate them, put them in pockets, and then within instead of having this massive lawn, you can have little sections that you feel, okay, I can manage this, I can maintain this. Um, let’s do today the orchard. Let’s do tomorrow the working garden and then sort of like space them out. Didn’t put the chicken coop in there. We won’t have the chicken coop eventually there. I think maybe we have chickens in the in the future. It is very hard because because having chickens, it is a commitment. If we go to Spain, the chickens cannot fly with us to Spain. So, they have to whether we have to organize for somebody to kind of come, feed them, clean them. So maybe in the future when Dante is older and he can enjoy, you know, come and collecting eggs and all of that. I absolutely love this tree. This was in here. You can actually see um I I know we keep mentioning, but we generally are in a very windy side. So much so that you can see the shape of the tree and you can see that because of the wind, it’s not grown straight up and you can see that it’s grown, you know, onto the side. Same on the other one. This is a much smaller tree. These are eaters. They are absolutely stunning and they so yummy. Um in fact like when we’ve forgotten to go shopping this our dinner. We just come to the tree and pick some apples for dinner. But they are very very nice. We just have to kind of like keep on top of collecting. So in the future we are thinking that potentially we will enlarge the orchard. We will put some sort of estate fencing around the um the drive and we’ll be you know I don’t know. I just imagine it like in few years time how lovely it’s going to be. So I do hope that you have enjoyed walking around the garden with us and uh this is where we are at. We started from nothing. So for me is a huge achievement and I want to do another one maybe later on in the winter and see how it’s looking the progress and then you know we can see it in the seasons how it’s changing and evolving. Thank you so much guys. If you have any recommendation of planting bulbs um suggestions and ideas please leave them in the comments. We love to hear it because sometimes we’re like, “Oh my god, that’s such a great idea. We never even thought about that.” And give it the thumbs up, like it, share it. You know, helps us to spread the word of the work that we’re doing. We love you. Lots of kisses. Coming up on next week’s episode. Welcome to our new kitchen. Oh no, it’s the middle of winter. I broke the heating.