Design Tips

On Monday I visited the Horsham Stone quarry in West Sussex with my local Society of Garden Designer’s cluster group.

We had a tour of the site and learnt a bit more about the stone itself, which has been used for centuries in the surrounding area and further afield.

Horsham stone is a sandstone that’s famous for the fossilised ripple marks on its surface. It looks just like a sandy beach when the tide goes out.

Not all the stone has this texture so often these large feature pieces are used for threshold steps, hearths or for areas where people want to make a feature of the stone.

The quarrying takes place for just two months of the year, during the summer months when the land is dry.  Only a 20m wide strip of field is excavated at a time and care is taken to replace the earth when the quarrying has finished which means that the land can be used for growing crops from the following year.

It has many uses, from walling stone to paving to roof tiles and can be seen used in buildings such as Kensington Palace and many historic churches across Sussex, Surrey and Kent.  There’s also evidence of it being used by the Romans nearly 2,000 years ago.

It’s a gorgeous stone, quite similar to reclaimed York stone, but with a much richer colour. Because of the nature in which the stone is quarried, they never quite know what they’ll find each year they have a large enough stock on site to cover most orders.

It’s certainly worth investigating if you’re looking for a local stone to use in the garden.  I know I’ll be considering it for future projects.

(Images: Lisa Cox)

Sloped gardens can be a bit daunting to deal with, but they provide an easy way to make a garden more interesting because you can use what’s already there to your advantage.  Of course flat gardens can be interesting too, but a naturally sloped space will present different opportunities that you might not otherwise have. Read more

I went to see a potential client in Clapham on Saturday. They live in a beautiful Victorian town house and are slowly restoring its original features. They’re very keen to improve the look and feel of the front garden first, the back garden will come later. Read more

It’s been really hot in the UK now for almost three weeks and we’ve all been very glad to be in shorts and sitting out in the garden at every given opportunity.  I haven’t much envied the commuters to London – I know what it’s like to travel home in a train without air conditioning! Read more

I spoke with one of my landscapers this afternoon because I’ve just sent over the drawings for my project near Muswell Hill.  He can’t get started on his quote until next week because he’s working on a tender for a large job in London and this will take him the majority of the week to pull together. Read more

If you read my blog regularly then you’ll know that the construction phase has commenced at one of my projects in Leatherhead.  Sods law it rained the minute the garden was stripped out and this means that the conditions on site are now a bit challenging. Read more

Pathways are a crucial element to a well designed garden.  They take you on a journey from one area to the next so they need to be practical but also provide some interest along the way.  It’s therefore important to plan them carefully to ensure that they are fit for purpose. Read more

I went to The Garden Press Event a couple of weeks ago and one of the products that caught my eye were these flower seed collections by Nova-Flore, distributed in the the UK by Meadow in My Garden. Read more

I have been aware of outdoor fires for some time, but I came across Planika last week and thought it would be nice to share some images and details about their bio-ethanol fires that can be used both inside and outside your home. Read more

Over the past year I have worked with a lot of clients who have been tackling house building projects.  Most often I am called in after the work has finished when, inevitably, the garden has been rather trashed. Read more