National Garden Scheme garden Offcot at Kynaston near Oswestry is open this week for charity. It is the garden of Tom Pountney the man behind the award winning grounds at Salop leisure's Love 2 Stay. Meander around the curvy garden paths, take in the sunken garden, enjoy the riot of colour, feed the giant fish and then relax is the gardens own pub: The Stumble Inn.
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00:00Tom Poutney, how are you sir? Not too well, thank you and you? I'm good yeah and we're here at your
00:04lovely garden, Ofcot, Kinnerston. Kinnerston, that's it. That's it, just not too far from
00:10Oswestry and you're open for the NGS coming, is it Thursday, Friday and Saturday?
00:16Thursday, Friday, Saturday this week and we're sitting in a lovely little spot,
00:20lovely little sunken garden. If we just do a little mosey round. Tom this wasn't
00:27here last time I come. It wasn't, no I decided to do it, it was back in March when I started
00:33building it so I'd managed to get hold of the stone. It took a lot of digging out.
00:37Yeah, well so you had a bit of a deal didn't you, some chap said you can have
00:40it for free. Yeah. But there's a lot of, there's a lot of lifting and bagging,
00:44yeah. How many journeys in the car Tom? About five, six trips. Yeah. Yeah, it's a lot of work.
00:50Yeah, yeah and if people haven't been to your garden, I'm gonna get you to describe it now,
00:55go on. Right, so it is a traditional cottage garden, there's a lot of trees, a lot of shrubs
01:01and a lot of herbaceous plants. So it's very, very well packed in, a lot of windy paths,
01:05a lot of hidden areas as well to explore. So yeah, it's a proper country gem. So you must
01:13be pleased with how it's looking Tom. It's fantastic again, yeah. Yeah, it's looking great,
01:17looking really good. And been a difficult year for gardeners? It has, obviously due to the weather,
01:22it's just been so wet, with very little sunshine. Obviously the grass and the weeds have loved it,
01:27but a lot of the bedding plants really, it's the bedding plants that have struggled this year. Yeah,
01:31and you're the man at Salet Pleasure aren't you? You're now manager of the garden centre there?
01:37Is it? Love plants, yes. So do you get a discount? Could be befriending you. And I mean they love to
01:44stay grounds, they're fantastic and that's been thanks to you over the years hasn't it. But
01:49absolutely magical garden. It's quite a big plot isn't it? It's quite deceiving if you were to
01:53look at it from above. It's about an acre, about an acre altogether. Lots and lots of little windy
01:59paths that kind of lead you off in all directions and a glorious pub shed. That's it. Please tell
02:05me you've had a few good nights falling asleep at the bar. Definitely have. Looks fantastic in
02:10there. Even that's changed as well hasn't it, over the last couple of years, different seating
02:15layouts and so on. So if you had to pick a favourite kind of couple of plants in your garden,
02:21what is it that's doing the business for you this year? To be honest with you, I would say the
02:25hydrangea, so just behind you here. Oh the white one? Which is just here, this one here. Oh okay.
02:31So there's this one and there's one that's just in flower on the other side. So obviously they
02:36love the water. So yeah, so they've done well and obviously the phlox, which are just here. There's
02:43quite a few of them dotted around the garden. They're looking stunning at the moment. Yeah. So
02:47to have a, I mean this is a magical garden and we can, you know, come and chuck some money in the
02:51charity bucket and come and see it. But to live this garden, how many hours do you have to put
02:57in here Tom? It's constant. I mean as soon as I finish work, I'm out here, there's a lot of
03:02deadheading. Unfortunately if you want a garden looking like this, it's high maintenance. Very
03:07high maintenance. Yeah and always a pleasure for you doing it or some days are you thinking,
03:11I don't want to, the last thing I want to do is get out into the garden. No, I love it. Any spare
03:16time I'm out here. Yeah. Yeah, it's good. They say it's good for the soul and the mental health,
03:21don't they? Gardening. So they say, yeah, it does, yeah, yeah. Cool. Well it looks absolutely
03:27fantastic Tom. So visitors, get yourself down, Ofcot, Google it, NGS, look in the shops yourself
03:33for details. Thank you Tom. Thank you.