Spot Home Farm: What Occurs When a Textile Designer Creates a Campsite

We expect British textile designer Gemma Shepherd has invented the proper tenting accent: a three-in-one merino wool wrap/throw/blanket. Not solely that, she opened what, for us, might be the proper campsite wherein to put on it: Spot Home Farm.

“Usually for me tenting is simply hell on earth,” she admits. “The considered only a skinny sheet of material between you and a whole stranger… I simply discover that so grim!” With that in thoughts, final summer season, she arrange simply two bell tents in a secluded meadow on her household farm within the Low Weald of Kent: a wild, low-impact, quietly luxurious website for teams of mates that opens in Could and disappears nearly with no hint in September.

Let’s have a look round.

The tents are positioned in a meadow that varieties a part of Gemma’s 50-acre household farm. The meadow is surrounded by Orlestone Forest Nature Reserve, a protected and historic woodland that’s residence to nightingales, deer, and uncommon species of moths and butterflies. “The meadow itself is that this magical enclave,” explains Gemma. “There may be an previous hunt leap in a single nook of the sphere. Climb over that and also you’re straight out into the forest. In the event you stroll far sufficient, you’ll emerge on the pub within the village of Warehorne, which is ideal.” (In our ebook, all good campsites require a stroll to a village pub and a simple meal.)

Rising up, Gemma camped in the identical meadow, and it was throughout lockdown that she rediscovered its magic. “I actually felt for anybody residing in a metropolis at the moment,” she says. “I all of a sudden appreciated simply how fortunate we had been to have this house,  and I wished different folks to expertise it as a result of it’s simply so attractive, so peaceable.”

Gemma has arrange two bell tents—one giant and one little—and furnished them with “correct beds” (one other prerequisite for completely happy tenting). Within the bigger tent there’s a tremendous king, two single beds, and house for a 3rd beneficiant camp mattress. There’s even an “old-school washstand” on the foot of the mattress so that you gained’t end up brushing your enamel in a bush on the finish of the evening. There’s additionally a log burner and armchairs in every (tick: that is the UK).