Posts Tagged ‘contemporary garden design’

I have recently been working with a client in Reading to help them plan their new front garden.  They plan to build the garden themselves and had lots of ideas, but just wanted some help to bring them together into a coherent plan that they can work with.

They want to create a striking garden with a contemporary edge, one that makes them smile when they come home and stands out, in a good way of course!

They liked the idea of using gravel as this is reasonably inexpensive and also permeable which means that they don’t need to apply for planning permission before the work is done.

As their neighbour has right of access down the side of the house to his back garden, we wanted to make a clear route at the same time as clearly marking the boundaries of their property.

The front of the house faces south and this means it gets full sun throughout most of the day.  There are plans in place to convert the garage into utility and office space so the garage door will go and be replaced with a window.

The existing bench will therefore be positioned under the window so it was important to retain some privacy, as they like to sit there when it’s warm.

Part of the planning agreement for the garage conversion requires them to provide an additional parking space so that the new driveway will easily accommodate 2 cars.

The contemporary style trellis will lift the space and make it more uniformed and the planters will provide a physical barrier without blocking out the light.  Planting will be simple and quite minimalist using tall calamagrostis to provide a screen without the dense feeling a hedge gives.

My clients are now in the process of choosing materials, but they’re keen to use a sawn stone and Horcott aggregate because it’s so stable and looks attractive.  I’m looking forward to seeing it come to life over the next few months.

The next garden I’m going to feature is The Garden Pad which was designed by Dan Bowyer and built by London Gardens and Streetscape.  I know Dan and I also work with London Gardens so I was even more interested to see the garden they had created! Read more

I went to visit my project in Sutton this week, to check on the planting and see how things are progressing.  I can’t believe how much everything has grown since it was planted in April, it already feels more like a garden. Read more

If you’re a regular reader of my blog then you’ll know that I carried out the planting at my Sutton project a few weeks ago.  It was a long old day as I was on site at 7.30am and didn’t finish until gone 7pm by which time it was not only too dark to take pictures, but all I wanted to do was to get home and have a hot bath. Read more

Last week I presented a concept design and sketches to a client in Sutton.  Now that they have almost finished the redesign of their interior space, they wanted to look at the garden.  Because the only access to the back garden is through the house, they can’t put the hall flooring in until the garden has been finished so we are hoping to start the build before the end of October. Read more