'Our garden was washed away by the sea - twice!'

摘要

Vi and Alan Everard garden on a parched and windy shingle bar at Pevensey Bay. In spite of the dramatic setbacks, their garden shows how determination and clever planting can win the day. How many times would you start a new garden from scratch? Alanand Vi Everard have done it three times in the past seven years - once when they first arrived at their seaside garden in Pevensey Bay, East Sussex, then again after ferocious storms wrecked the garden in 1997 and 1999. Each time they've simply rolled up their sleeves, salvaged any useful driftwood, then watched as the Environment Agency sent a tractor round to shift the tar-covered debris. "It's the shingle that does the most damage," explains Alan. "We get tons of it, sweeping away everything in itspath. After the last storm we built a sturdy wire fence across the bottom of the garden so that when the storm tides push the shingle up to it, it forms its own wall of defence."