Design Tips

As you know, I’ve just spent the last 6 days planting up the project near Woking.  It’s all coming together now and I’ll be meeting with the client and landscaper later this week to sign everything off.  When I was designing the garden, one of the considerations was an area near the garden shed as it could been seen from the lounge window and was really unattractive…

Because there is a storage area the other side of the shed, the wheelbarrows have been moved and we have introduced a decorative timber panel which covers up the fence and the ugly blockwork wall behind it.

As you probably know by now, I am a huge fan of English Garden Joinery and this panel was developed with Rob Horton, one of the Directors, who had seen a similar effect on the wall of a restaurant.  The cuts of timber have been chosen carefully so that the heart of the timber is the main feature and, because it has been constructed using green oak, the timber will eventually split a little to create a more rustic effect – as you can see, this has started to happen already.

To create more interest, the timber has been cut at different lengths so that shadows are cast when the light catches it.  This gives the panel more depth and three dimension and would look absoultely wonderful with a couple of subtle lights shining across the surface at night.

Disguising ugly corners, fences and sheds is a consideration in most of my design work.  Sometimes trellis and plants are enough to do the job, but if there is a focal point that can be seen from the house all year round, sometimes you need to use something that has a little bit more “wow” factor about it. I think you’ll agree that this looks really good and I can’t wait to see what it looks like in a few months time once the timber has weathered a little and the plants have started to fill out.

If you’ve been reading my recent blog series about designing your own garden hopefully by now you’ll be feeling much better equipped to take the brief, survey and analyse your site and start work on a concept design.  Once you have a sketchy conceptual idea and the design of your new garden is really starting to take shape, it’s time to start thinking about the details. Read more

So, you’ve carried out and drawn up the survey of your garden and analysed the site.  You’ve also made a note of your own brief – what you want to include, how you want to feel when you step out into the garden and you’ve got a good idea about your personal style and how this will be applied to the garden. Read more

Hopefully you saw my post last week about taking the brief and you’re now ready to get started with the design.  Before you can put pencil to paper you need to spend some time looking at the site so that you know its possibilities and constraints. Read more

Last week I met with a new client to take the brief for their garden project.  They are having building work done on the house and the front and back gardens will need to be modified so that they work with the new configuration of the house when it’s finished. Read more

I’ve written before about designing yourself a gorgeous terrace, when I gave you some tips to help you to get the most from your entertaining space. But what about the finer details? How do you make sure they’re right too?  What material you use on the terrace will of course affect the whole look and feel of the space so I thought it would be helpful to give you a few tips about choosing which to use. Read more

We garden designers often have to be flexible beasts to meet our clients expectations.  When it comes to the construction phase of a garden project some clients have a person or company in mind that they would like to use to build the garden for them.  More often than not, this will be the builder who did an excellent job with their house extension project and has worked for them on and off for years. Read more

August can be a challenging time in the garden as it’s an in-between stage in the flowering year.  Many of the early summer-flowering shrubs and perennials have finished and normally (although not the case  this year due to hot dry spring!) the later-flowering plants haven’t quite made an appearance. Read more

Most clients I see don’t normally have a budget figure in mind for the garden, mostly because they just don’t know how much they need to be spending but also, I think, because they don’t view the garden in the same way as they would a house building project. Read more

The weather has been a challenge for most gardeners this year, a very hot dry spring followed by a wet cool spell and now it can’t quite work out what it’s doing!  One thing that is certain is the early arrival of the late flowering perennials and my garden is a bloom with plants that don’t normally come into their own until September. Read more