In Your Garden: Jacquie's Dartmoor Garden

Posted on 6 Feb 2026

Gardens

In our series #GMinyourgarden, we’re peeking over the fence into gardens around the world to explore their places in our lives today. This week, Jacquie's Dartmoor garden:

Creating a new garden which was a blank canvas was very exciting. I felt like a child with a new toy. The challenge was to design a garden in the style of the vibe I love: bold, architectural with tropical overtones and more than a splash of English country.

I wanted to create a space with a strong evergreen backbone – with plants such as Trachycarpus fortunei, and phormium tenax – in which to add the passing fancies of seasonal colour, using plants including pollinators love, such as hellenium, cosmos and dipsacus fullonum, which I allow to seed freely in the space. The bees love it, and the birds love to bathe in quirky water stations I’ve positioned around the garden.

Phormium tenax in flower, Jacquie Felix-Mitchell

Mini water feature and Libertia Grandiflora

I love a garden that’s “slightly wilded”. When we moved here, my young nephews asked if the new garden would be “jungly” like the last one I had. That was six years ago. I’m delighted that the space is starting to grow both in drama and height.

The Woodland border in May

I love the irony of such an “unexpected” garden so close to Dartmoor, belonging to a wee Sixties bungalow on the edge of the cool and hip community of Buckfastleigh. I love entertaining. It’s such a joy to sit around the firepit in the garden with pals, or to sing loudly in the garden on a hot Summer’s Day, to an audience of the quietly appreciative plants – and friends!