A life less ordinary in an eco-paradise

Sculptor Ian Wright and his artist wife Lynn live in a restored farmhouse in a sheltered valley just outside Skibbereen, Co Cork. Both Londoners, the couple's passion for the environment has led to their diversification into tree-planting and they have transformed 80 acres into a sanctuary for flora and fauna. They've created a pond and several lakes for wild otters and an assortment of ducks, chickens and turkeys. There is a little brown chick who thinks she's a turkey and Cyril, a magnificent bronze turkey who demands to be petted.

Ian's sculptures are all over the farmyard and garden - quirky female figures cast in concrete, in various stages of undress. Garden of Eden meets bordello, in the midst of a truly wonderful natural habitat. A cluster of workshops and studios at the back of the house are crammed with examples of the couple's artistic talents.

"Lynn and I came over to West Cork 30 years ago on the hippie trail and stayed behind when the others went home. When we first moved in, the house had no doors or windows or electricity. The kitchen was a small parlour. We knocked this room and the hallway through to the livingroom, turned the stairs around and put in a glass door to keep the heat in.

"There was a very basic fireplace with an old black cast-iron hook. It never gave out heat and smoked badly. Finally, we got so sick of it we ripped it out and attacked the wall to see what was behind it. We were delighted to find a huge brick and stone arched fireplace - a friend gave us an old cooking crane to fit and we put in two pieces of stone to create a woodstore. Now there's underfloor heating from the Stanley range.

"Lots of city people came to West Cork at that time and the locals were very good to us. Some of the ones who left went on to make millions. We started off repairing brass and copper tools, anything for survival. Lynn and I had both gone to art school, so we worked together. Then the Silly Ceramics business took off and we were up to our eyes making crazy bathrooms for friends in Paris and London.

"We started turning up in magazines and people would find us. We became inundated and had to turn down work. One Australian company wanted 20 bathrooms a week - we couldn't do that in a year. The idea of a `bread and butter' line didn't suit us. We never make a master mould and as soon as anything starts selling well, we stop making it. Later, I got involved in environmental work and was invited to Africa." Africa has given me the grounding I got here 30 years ago."

Their own bathroom is what Ian calls "piss-take classical" - a truly amazing room filled with "bra-roque" ceramic columns draped with Wonderbras and mirrors propped up with ceramic feet in flip-flops. A plaster male head and shoulders leans thoughtfully over the bidet, eyes averted. The wash-hand-basin is a woman holding up her stays. The bathroom door was part of an old confessional. The house is filled with reminders of Ian's environmental work in East Africa. A porthole window in the guest room is a washing machine door and many of the kitchen tools hanging from hooks in the rafters are made from recycled tin.

One very smart basket on closer inspection has been fashioned entirely from bottle tops. Laundry baskets are made from plastic baling wire. There's even a saucepan which was a car number plate in better days. "The kitchen worktop is made from naturally-edged Lawson Cypress and my bed was used by a farmer to fill a gap in a field. I swapped it for a piece of plywood he needed to mend an old barn," says Ian.

Half-way up the stairs and suspended over the workrooms is Lynn's yoga room, built entirely from tree off-cuts. Everywhere is a kaleidoscope of colour from Lynn's brightlypainted pottery, inspired by their mutual interest in encouraging butterflies back to their corner of West Cork. They have bought another 70 acres of land, of which 40 acres are already planted with a wide variety of deciduous trees, many bought with their own money.

IAN and Lynn have dug "three big lakes and six small ponds and there are 10 acres of wetlands. All the money that came in was taken up with a field project here or in Africa. If we think about going out for a meal, we mark it out in trees: £60 would be 120 trees, because we buy in bulk, so there's no contest," says Lynn.

They started planting deciduous trees to prove it was possible to do an environmental and economically profitable project using the grants available. Ian is angry about the planting of conifers, which he says are not indigenous and describes as a blight on the landscape.

"I applaud the Millennium Forests. They are planting thousands of broad-leafed trees in the next three years, but Coillte is also planting 120,000 Sitka Spruce. That's what scares me. Grants from Europe are about planting natural trees. Look at alder. It used to be called the Irish mahogany and grows as fast as Sitka. There's no problem using alder for pulp either. There is a whole series of myths about growing deciduous trees."

A small field at the top of the hill has been left for wildflowers to flourish. Once a year, horses are sent in to graze on the seed tops, which are then naturally distributed around the land. "We set out to create an ecoparadise," says Ian. "By making reserves like this around the country, it allows small pockets of land where butterflies and wildlife can survive."