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  • The English Garden

    A DREAM COME TRUE

    Aug 12, 2020 5 minutes
    WORDS MELISSA MABBITT
    PHOTOGRAPHS
    NICOLA STOCKEN

    In a rocky hollow in a quiet corner of Pembrokeshire lies a garden that spins magic out of adversity. Its owner, Christina Shand, has created a dreamlike space in an unlikely spot – ‘between a bog and a hard rock’ as she describes it – where tactile plants dance in soft light and colours and scents enchant the senses. Hiding as it does within an ancient landscape of standing stones and prehistoric burial sites, the mystical sense of place she has created here feels faultless.

    Conjuring her garden almost from thin air, she built Dyffryn Fernant from the scraps of her former life. Having lost her home and business following a divorce and financial crisis, she moved with her two young sons to what was then a dilapidated farm in a forgotten cleft in the Preseli Hills. “After everything went pear-shaped, I had to sell

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