Fferm Cynefin is based at Tŷ Rhos Uchaf, a seven-acre site in north Pembrokeshire, within the Pembrokeshire Coast National Park. It’s a wild and wonderful place.

Long ago, the land began as a sheep farm, but from the late 1950s to the early 1990s it was a thriving garden centre and tree nursery, and the large glasshouses, now mostly derelict, are from that time. After a colourful chapter as a party venue that many locals still remember, the land, glasshouses and gardens were left to go wild from the late 1990s.

Restoration work began here in 2019, and in 2022 Fferm Cynefin CIC was set up to open that work up to the wider community. Something about the land spoke to us – it had been so damaged by decades of human activity – but here was nature claiming it back. We saw our chance to work alongside that process, restoring the land so that people and wildlife can thrive together.

With the help of many volunteers, apprentices, neighbours and friends, we set to work. A major focus has been restoring the largest glasshouse, nursing its old tangles of grapes, passionfruit, figs and apricots back to health and slowly turning it into an indoor forest garden.

About four acres of pasture were badly degraded: compacted, overgrazed, bare in places, and scattered with rubbish. After a long winter collecting every scrap (anyone who visited then will remember being handed a bucket and wellies on arrival), we reseeded bare patches with diverse cover crops to build topsoil, increase biodiversity and feed pollinators. A small flock of Shetland sheep and a mobile chicken house helped restore the pasture through rotational grazing. We’ve also planted thousands of native, edible and medicinal trees and plants, developing windbreaks, forest gardens, agroforestry lanes, coppice plantations, and no-dig annual gardens.

We’ve worked alongside a range of animals to help restore and reclaim some of the land – pigs and goats helped us to clear brambles in the early years, but today a couple of carefully managed ponies graze the land, provide manure for the gardens, and are beginning to help with fossil-fuel-free work.

There’s still a long way to go, but seeing the wildflower meadow and forest gardens improve each year shows us we’re on the right track. We’re designing the site as a rich learning environment, with a diverse range of regenerative growing and land-based techniques side by side, so visitors can see, compare and try them for themselves. Together we’re building a thriving permaculture demonstration site – a place to learn, and to inspire and support others to do the same.

Want to be part of it? Join our Saturday open garden sessions!