Nenya's Garden

Nestled into a surburban street in Edinburgh is the small, yet abundant micro forest garden, developed by permaculture educator and passionate plantswoman Nenya Milne. You can spot Nenya's place from the far end of the street, as the garden that is bursting with plants and life.

Her vision was to create a garden that, in her own words, is laid back, fruitful, productive and bonkers! The garden was to be orderly enough to navigate, colourful, self reliant and low maintenance to fit alongside busy family life. 

Nenya always dreamed of being able to put plants together, that were useful and productive but that also looked beautiful. Her front garden is what she describes and an edible show garden, where she has created a densely planted area full of both edibles and ornamentals. Her intention here was to inspire her neighbours to have a go at growing, by demonstrating that you could create an attractive garden, full of edibles that didn't require a lot of work. She claims to demonstrate this by not doing very much in it now, as it is well established and takes good care of itself. 

The front garden is on a slight slope, which has been sectioned into terraced beds along the contour line with paths in between. By doing this, Nenya has managed to control the flow of water through the garden, so that it stays in the soil, which has proved essential after several months of drought.

There is a blue flag iris filled pond, which houses an abundance of frogs, retaining vital water in the garden. A fruit bush windbreak frames one side of the garden. To the other side of the path is a Nenya's low maintenance forest garden, featuring Cornelian cherry, bush cherry, standard and dwarfing plums, crab apple, mulberry, wineberry, blueberry, bilberry, huckleberry and a glut of currants. These are interplanted with hostas, fragrant herbs, edible persicaria and globe artichokes.   

One of Nenya's favourite garden plants is her oriental borage, which provides food in the early spring and is beloved by bees. This is one of the many plants that is grown here as stock for her garden design business Perennis Permaculture, which can then easily be transplanted into clients gardens. 

The back garden was designed to serve more as a functional garden with productivity throughout the seasons and space for the family to relax. It boasts three apple trees (discovery, pitmaster's pineapple & Browlees Russet) and two pears ( Concorde self pollinating & Buerre hardy) all on dwarfing rootstocks, supported by an understorey of hostas. A chocolate vine sprawls across the shed and a bay tree and fig thrive in the sunniest spot in the garden by the back window. The garden is fringed with berries and currants and filled with forest garden favourites including caucasion spinach, rhubarb, day lily, babbingtons leek and over 15 different species of alliums. 

Rainwater is harvested from the roof of the house, which has been essential to the garden during what was an exceptionally dry year. Dense planting, hardy perennials and mulching also reduce the garden's need for watering, meaning that she only needed to water once during a three week drought. The back garden also has a small pond, soon to be expanded, which is full of yellow and blue flag iris. 

A hot composting system is hidden behind bamboo screens. She follows the Charles Dowding hot composting method, where she constantly adds to her composters to create fast, rat free compost. 

At the centre of the garden is a table and chairs, where we enjoy tea in the Edinburgh sunshine. This is a favourite spot in the garden where Nenya gets to enjoy the fruits of her labour. She says "I wouldn't have dared to be a garden designer without permaculture. It helped me to understand about guilds of plants and stacking from an ecological, botanical and aesthetic perspective." Nenya now works as a self employed permaculture garden designer several days a week.