Portfolio
Project 2 - Small Town Garden
Client: Single. No children. Works long hours
Hobbies: Horses and gardening
Garden: Long and narrow - split into two areas. Very sunny site
House: Stone-terraced cottage
Design: Curvilinear, cottage-style, with feature fountain
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Design issues
This very long and very narrow garden was mainly lawn and had one or two exciting features.
The client is a keen gardener and wanted a design which increased her scope using hardworking plants that require minimal attention (her demanding lifestyle meaning she spends many weeks at a time away from home.)
The garden has a North-South orientation and gets incredibly hot during the summer. This needed to be tempered.
It also had a stone wall dividing the garden in the middle; a lovely walnut tree; lap larch fencing one side; and a 3m leylandi hedge on the other.
The client's preference was for stone and steel.
An additional problem was a communal path running across the back of the house, which served four other houses.
Design solutions
To give the illusion of width in the garden, we used some useful tricks, namely: painting the fence; using wires and building at different levels.
We added a fountain to try and create a cooling influence, and built a tree seat around the walnut tree to offer a shady seating area.
To get around the problem of the shared path, we replaced the old concrete one and replaced it with a colourful slat and red brick courtyard.
Wrought iron gates and fencing enhance the courtyard feel and increase the sense of privacy for the client when she is relaxing or working in her garden.
The planting is a mixture of low maintenance perennials with a cottage style, climbers and roses. The rose are intricately planted into trimmed nufes in the conifer hedge, which makes the blankness of the hedge a lot less noticeable.
The fence is cloaked with climbers and roses & there is a unity of evergreens planted to link the next door garden's scheme. This, again, creates the impression of a wider garden.
A steel arch is erected in the old gateway into the lower garden; an area that has the same dimensions as the upper garden but is a much more open space.
The client needed to retain some lawn area for her dog and also wanted a cheery space, as the garden links to her main entry from car park to house.
To achieve this we carried on with the curvilinear feel and used the same ground in the paths. Two 'fake' walls were built around a small living seat and these unify the one built nearer the house.
The walls are also fully planted and, along with a further stone raised bed, provide all year round colour.
Finishing touches
As the client enjoys an equestrian lifestyle, we added a special momento of one her favourite horses in the form of a sculpture made from a concrete slab erected in the centre of the lawn.
Another subtlety is a narrow path under the conifer bridge, allowing a speedier access to the house.
This project took around 1 month to complete.
