Our Garden's Transition

Our garden...When we first took over the Woodmans, you wouldn't catch me in any garden doing any sort of gardening work, it was something when i was growing up which felt like a chore when your mum or dad asked you to pop outside to help in the garden... especially knowing there was huge spiders lurking round corners!

Skip forward a number of years and we took over the Woodmans with this massive garden at our disposal. Our dad who was the previous gardener before our tenure under the old landlords, obviously had some advice and helped us our for the first 3 years essentially teaching me the ways of the garden, how to mow, how to cut hedges, the general fundamentals of the garden. Now, anyone that knows me knows I'm quite impulsive when acting on an idea...now my dad had taught me the ways of the garden, I could slowly see what potential the garden could bring.

I am a publican... however, in my younger years, I was technically a professional musician, playing in different bands, recording artists, live sound and some filling in for members who couldn't make a gig... so obviously when it came to the garden, i wanted to make it a place where music could be played in a lovely setting. I wanted to "show off" some musicians on the isle of Wight, established and the up and coming, and as a an acoustic player... it was acoustic musicians I wanted as it gives a nice chilled vibe, rather than a full face melting band, we are just not that kind of pub. With this in mind, I had a blueprint in my mind of how I wanted the garden to eventually be set up.

The first stage of getting to where we are now was building a stage, one of our locals Jim aka "Jimbo Baggings" offered to help, so he built it in the spare field (this is where we were originally going to have the Sunday sessions) but it was clear because of the clay in the field, it just wasn't going to work. So we moved it into the main garden where its currently situated. Then COVID hit, and as you a probably aware, every business was losing money and we were no exception... and to add injury to insult, our play area was rotten... with pubs opening up soon, it was clear we couldn't open the play area so we needed to do something about it. This is where my original blueprint of how the garden was going to go when changed... a new vision was arriving in my head! So we cracked on and moved the garden around so it was completely unrecognisable to when we first took over.

With the new lay out, it opened up the garden, with the play area pushed back... we decided the brick BBQ that was originally at the back of the pub wasn't fit for purpose... so we decided to knock that down and built a wood kitchen, which allowed us to do street food on occasion along with the music which is how we decided on "the woodmans summer chill sessions".

So why not pop along, enjoy the garden, the sun, the company, plus of course the upcoming music and street food at our Sunday Summer Chill Sessions.

Harry Fletcher

Owner of The Woodmans Arms