Country house
Client brief: to create from scratch an attractive but easy to maintain setting for the house in an area of about half an acre.
Main challenges: heavy, stony, compacted soil and a variety of free-ranging animals.
Design solutions:
a wide ribbon of planting running from the main entrance gate, continuing by the house and around the main garden area,
a simple outline, made interesting with varied planting of low-maintenance (but tough and non-toxic) shrubs and herbaceous perennials,
flowering cherries and crab apples for a ‘Kentish orchard’ effect,
a sense of enclosure created with native plants appropriate to the countryside setting - a hornbeam hedge, a birch mini-grove, a guelder rose mini-thicket.
Sloping urban garden
Client brief: a low maintenance lawn-free garden with architectural plants and brightly coloured flowers for a ‘tropical jungle’ effect.
Main challenges: heavy clay soil and a two-way slope down from the house.
Design solutions:
a series of terraces created using timber sleepers,
gravel paths with some timber steps,
a gazebo – a focal point looking down from the house, but also a sitting place with the best view of the garden,
a selection of hardy plants with exotic appearance.
Primary School
Client brief: to design a sensory garden for quiet play where the children could get away from the noisy playing field when it becomes a bit too much, or to sit and chat with their friends. Sensory plants and features encouraging quiet play were required, as well as water.
Main challenges: invasive weeds and sloping ground with a steep bank to one side, and a path that was well constructed but awkwardly located.
Design solutions:
a picket fence with an inviting entrance on the corner, with the path relocated appropriately,
the bank terraced with timber sleepers, with wide steps up to the lawn area, the terraces planted up with colourful perennials,
wooden benches scattered throughout,
pebble fountain and reflection pool,
woven hazel wig-wams,
a mini-grove of 3 silver birch trees,
a sensory path.
Entrance garden to a country property
Client brief: devise an attractive planting scheme for the entrance garden, low maintenance, in keeping with the ‘old manor house’ style.
Main challenges: sloping ground, imported heavy topsoil over chalk.
Design solutions:
a simple colour scheme of green and white/cream with a bit of red to echo the colours of the walls,
yew topiary to complement the style of the house, the pyramid shapes reflecting the pitched roofs of the adjacent buildings,
loose low planting setting off the yew pyramids and providing interest and variety throughout the year.
Small town garden
Client brief: to create privacy with an attractive living screen at the far end of the garden where a conifer hedge has been removed, and to utilise as many as possible of the potted plants (e.g. rhododendrons) inherited from the previous owners.
Main challenges: shallow chalky soil, with plant nutrients exhausted by the conifer hedge, the need for shrubs that will grow quite fast but can be kept at 2-2.5 metres high.
Design solutions:
3 species of evergreen shrubs chosen for the screening,
multistem Himalayan birch placed strategically, with the white stems standing out in front of the evergreens,
wide border in front of the screen with a curved outline for an unbroken ‘sweeping look’,
a white arbour seat and a white statue on the ground to draw the eye down and away from the far view,
rhododendrons placed in ericaceous compost in attractive planters to complete the picture.
Courtyard garden
Client brief: to dress the bare courtyard with plants and make it look more attractive prior to the house sale, must be low maintenance.
Main challenges: raised bed in dry shade under a mature lime tree.
Design solutions:
careful plant selection – tough, resistant to drought,
plants for quick effect, architectural foliage, evergreens such as Fatsia, Phormium, ferns,
simple planters in one design but three different sizes,
planting on the bank massed along the front.
