Paradise RECLAIMED
On a warm June day, the garden at Am Brook Meadow in south Devon positively thrums with life. Its courtyard of Mediterranean plants, long borders of perennials and grasses, flowery meadows and large ponds are home to myriad invertebrates and other wildlife. Hard to imagine, then, that as recently as 2002 this earthly paradise was the site of an intensive pig farm; the smell was so strong that some people didn’t even get out of their cars on viewing day. Jennie and Jethro Marles were not so faint-hearted: “If you walked through the site, beyond the buildings, past the dark leylandiis and poplars and along the stream, you could see how beautiful it was. We knew instantly that it was
