IT IS hard to imagine that the garden created by Marc Broadbent and Daniel Sturgeon is little more than a year old.

“We started in about March of last year when the garden just had eight big fir trees in and little else,” said Marc.

“The plot is about 120 metres long with a drop of about 10.5 metres from the top near the house to the wood at the bottom.

“The garden is what attracted us to the house. It has so much potential.”

For Marc, 37, and Darren, 30, this garden is a horticultural first on a grand scale.

“We haven’t done anything like this before. My mum and dad are great gardeners, but all this has come out of books really.

“I look things up on the internet or read up on things if I want to know what goes where.

Marc is a computer programmer and Darren is a bank manager. Both love to get away from their desks and work in the garden.

“We’ve tried to create different areas in the garden with a water feature running from top to bottom to draw everything together.

“We’ve also installed coloured spotlights which run on a computer sequence lighting different areas in primary colours for bursts of about five seconds.

“It is all run on about 25 different circuits and the effect is very subtle changing the mood and atmosphere particularly when the weather is not good.

“The electronics are the easy bit, it’s the planting that’s difficult,” said Marc.

That said, the two have reused material on site from those felled firs to build paths, stepping stones and log piles to encourage wildlife to linger.

The planting is restrained with ferns, astilbes and hostas clear favourites. The softness of pinks, whites and mauves helps reflect light in this woodland setting while bog primulas, rushes and reeds lends a natural maturity to the newly created water feature which is pumped on three different levels.