It’s all About

The Garden

From Derelict Humdinger to Positive Potions HQ

A beautiful, four-acre walled garden on Anglesey that stood derelict for over fifty years. Kew apparently visited, to get some tips on glasshouse building in the late 19th Century. So it must have been really something.

But the door had been shut. There was a forest in there! Even ‘lost’ buildings, hidden in the undergrowth. Heligan? This was Heligan with bells on.

Line drawing of a thyme plant with multiple branches and clusters of small flowers or buds, in dark green.

‘Don’t Attempt it, You’ll Fail!’

Only made me more determined.

Candida Meyrick, the founder of Positive Potions, wearing a pink blouse, yellow beaded necklace, gold bracelets, and sunglasses, tending to plants in a greenhouse with green vines overhead and potted plants on shelves along the wall.
Line drawing of a botanical illustration with various plants, flowers, and leaves arranged in a curved pattern.

Now, Ten Years on, the Garden has been Reincarnated as the HQ of Positive Potions

Hidden in the Undergrowth

Line drawing of a bunch of grapes with a large leaf attached.

Irresistible

My husband’s great-great-grandfather, clearly fond of champagne, had buried his empties neck-down in the soil to make a ‘champagne border’.

I discovered this one day, with the help of some bypass loppers. I idly thought: how about a cocktail border, to carry on the theme?

A wet garden border covered with green ivy plants, with champagne bottles partially buried in the ground.

But then:

The Sugar Question

I quit sugar four years ago (never felt better, FYI), and rarely drink. And started noticing: there was nothing out there for me. Rad green juices have their place in my life in the morning. Ditto herbal tea. Fermented drinks are great but usually sugar-packed (I make my own, to solve that one).

So Apart From Water, What Was There?

Cue Deafening Silence

And I am a great believer in the wisdom of Gandhi: ‘be the change you want to see in the world’. Added to Field of Dreams’ definitive: ‘If you build it, they will come.’ Isn’t that how all businesses begin? If there’s something you want, and it’s not there, then you’ve got to make it yourself.

So that’s what we did. ‘We’ being me, my three brilliant children, and a lovely lady called Fiona who now goes by the grown-up title of Production Manager.

We gathered herbs by the armful and started to have fun. We brewed. We distilled. We mushed, steeped and macerated. We generally monkeyed around until we came up with about thirty different flavours. These we narrowed down to four. Checked them with our expert consultant, Jane Wallwork-Gush, The Exmoor Herbalist. Started trying them out on friends – also on complete strangers.

Line drawing of a peppermint plant with leaves and flowers.

The Result

Small, pocket-sized bottles that can make a big difference to your health. And now the originals have been joined by four new flavours. All of them packed with anti-oxidant, immune-boosting botanical power.

No sugar, sweeteners, junk or alcohol. Just the incredible benefits of super-charged herbs, flowers and roots. They taste delicious, too.

Assorted bottles of Positive Potions botanical drink-drops surrounded by colorful flowers.

A Positive Paradise

It is still an impossible project. Where previous generations had forty gardeners, we have two and a half. Where they had their own gas works (seriously) and daily deliveries of coal from Liverpool, we have good compost and solar panels. Where they relied on a round-the-clock workforce, we rely on permaculture and moon planting.

But it is paradise*, and we love it. And that makes the whole thing sing. It is life, when before there was dereliction. It is the change I wanted to see. It is Positive Potions.

*Paradise means literally ‘within the walls’, from the Persian ’Pairidaeza’