About The Rowan Tree
We're Bettina and Trevor Davies and The Rowan Tree is both our business and our way of life!
Over the past few years we’ve created a flourishing cut flower garden on a field of pasture.
We’ve laid out growing areas, barrowed tonnes of compost and manure up a muddy track, we’ve planted hedges and fruit trees and hundreds of herbaceous perennials.
The garden attracts a multitude of wildlife – from bees, butterflies and moths to grassnakes and toads and an increasing range of birds. We never use pesticides and artificial fertilisers and work by hand – it’s a labour of love and a work in progress!
How we got here
Both of us spent our early lives in the performing and creative arts – Bettina as a dancer, choreographer and dance teacher and Trevor as an actor, musician, writer and composer.
Twelve years ago our interest in environmental issues and horticulture took over. Bettina spent a year studying horticulture at Capel Manor College in London, we took on a municipal allotment with a view to exploring food self-sufficiency and we launched our first business growing and selling cut flowers.
Our business fuelled a desire to live a simpler life, and to live on the land where we work. In 2020 the opportunity arose to become land stewards of our 6 acre field on the Gower Peninsula and we haven’t looked back since.
We’re proud members of the Ecological Land Cooperative, a visionary organisation increasing access to land for people wishing to pursue agroecological livelihoods. You can read more about their work here – ecologicalland.coop.
We’re also extremely pleased to have been granted residential planning permission under Wales’ groundbreaking One Planet Development policy. (As the first OPD in Swansea). You can find out more about OPD here – oneplanetcouncil.org.uk.
