Page 55 - Koi Net - On-Line Koi Magazine - Issue 12

We still had access to the ponds, as his ex-partner still
owned the farm and wasn’t in a hurry to sell, so Mark
still did some work on it in his spare time, breeding a
few Koi each year.
The garden maintenance turned into garden design and
construction, as well as Koi pond construction, which in
short, resulted in Mark becoming one of the country’s
top garden designers, winning several RHS Gold awards
for garden design and construction including the top
award for water garden design, the Tudor Rose, at
Hampton Court Palace Flower Show in 2000. During this
period, we started our family with our eldest son being
born in 1994 and our second son in 1996.

New Beginnings
In 1998 Mark’s ex-partner decided he wanted to sell the
farm. We couldn’t afford to buy the whole 15 acre site
and so bought the 6 acres that contained the main
Mark wins the top award for
water garden design, the ponds. Now that we owned the site ourselves we
Tudor Rose, at Hampton decided that we would try and make it a business again.
Court Palace Flower Show
in 2000. There was no accommodation on-site and, although we
lived in the village by now, we realised, from experience,
that there was no way we could successfully run the
farm unless we lived there, so we applied for planning
permission to live on-site.
We now had a six acre field with ponds on it and nothing
else, we had no mains electricity, no mains water and no
sewage. We had to first build ourselves a 150 metre
driveway which had to be 1 metre thick to cope with the
water-logged nature of the land. Next we had to get
mains electricity laid on which cost thousands of
pounds, once we had done this we could then construct
our living accommodation!
Our temporary home in 2000
(not quite finished!) whilst we We also had to dig a well. Fortunately Mark had
developed the farm.
perfected the art of dowsing for water with metal rods
and was able to find a suitable spot to dig a well for our
household use. Now we had water we had to install a
sewage treatment plant for the house. Finally, and only
once we had done all this, we were able to move in
which we did on the 11th December 2000, our youngest
son was not quite four years old at the time.

To be continued in the next Issue.
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