BRIEF: “Make the garden less boring”

A low maintenance design with an easy naturalistic feel. Would like to break the long garden into informal rooms to make it more manageable and to add interest and a sense of discovery. Use the concrete plinth by the house to make the most of the evening sun. Create a reason to go to the end of the garden, possibly a seating area with a firepit. Screen the end of the garden from the neighbours so that it will feel comfortable to sit there.

Wants:

Multi-stem trees, silver birch trees, pleached trees. Contrast of arching grasses against solid outlines, the repetition of spheres and grasses, frothy Cotinus, calm greens and muted colours with pops of colour. Corten steel, pompom hakone grass, Echinops and Alliums. Would like to keep plenty of lawn, and to allow areas of long meadow grass to create billowing swathes of long grass. A simple planting scheme with plenty of repetition and year-round interest to suit the conditions and aspect of the garden.

Design Rationale:

The garden closest to the house is a more structured with a contemporary pergola constructed on top of the existing concrete plinth and the floor covered with an outdoor rug. We’ve added raised concrete beds and filled them with soft grasses and evergreen perennials to provide a transparent screen through which you can catch glimpses of the rest of the garden. The pergola is a simple structure and can be used to train hanging climbers whilst the concrete beds will be left in their natural brutal state. There are steps down to the lawn from the rear of the pergola, and a stepping stone path set in the lawn to visually and physically link the deck and pergola, and provide a walkway with a focal point at the end, ideally a bench or two comfortable chairs. Beds cut in across the garden with multi-stem trees, grasses and repeated conifer domes to bring the planting away from the edges of the garden, and provide further organic screens. As you move down the garden it becomes more organic and flowing with swathes and meadows of billowing grasses, and softly curved lawns eventually lead to a deck tucked away behind low plants, with twinkling lights hanging from the nearby apple tree, and soft comfortable chairs. The planting is a wonderful contrast of arched grasses, structural domes, vase- shaped trees and spherical flowers.