NATURE’S WAY
It should come as no surprise that a pair of ecologists have made a beautiful, wildlife-friendly garden in rural Somerset around a house with resident barn owls; what does surprise is that this peaceful setting was once a place of heavy industry populated by the collieries and slag heaps of the Somerset Coalfield, where the last pits closed as recently as 1973.
Alex Crossman and Jen Weaver moved to College Barn in a small village near Midsomer Norton in 2012. A modest converted mine building next to Alex’s parents’ house, it’s surrounded by trees, rough grass and wildflowers, and it fulfilled the couple’s ambition to “live in a wood”. Jen, a professional botanist, was delighted to find the poetically named corky-fruited water-dropwort,, a pretty white umbel of damp meadows, in their new garden. This was much
