Driving through France recently – on my way to visit family and give a talk on ‘coppicing’ to a gardening club – I had great fun photographing ‘les ronds points Anglais’ I think these could become a subject of another gardening club talk. On the way we took a detour through the Loire valley to the ‘Chaumont garden festival’. This was…
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Children’s garden – Basingstoke
This children’s centre (for 0-5 year olds) wants to involve the parents to create an exciting outdoor area to maximize play and exploration. The brief was to maximise the potential of the outdoor area and the design incorporated: vegetable growing, an edible maze, bug discovery, a living willow adventure trail with den, with sensory planting around…
Chelsea inspired garden – Gloucestershire
This is a lovely site attached to a large country house with a swimming pool and horse stables however the budget was quite tight given the scale of the project. At Chelsea this year I was inspired by the planting in one of the borders in Luciano Giubbilei’s Laurent Perrier garden: the rich burgundy reds, deep blues and…
Blank canvas for a formal garden – Surrey
Pleached hornbeams have been used to hide an electricity transformer, low box hedges create a parterre which is to be planted with Iris, Verbena, roses, Penstemons…, yew hedging divides areas, creates direction and encloses the new swimming pool. Scalloped ‘windows’ in the hedging emphasize view points whilst box cubes and topiary add a modern sculptural element to this design. …
Complex levels, fantastic view of levels – Wells
A town garden currently being constructed and the bungalow being extended, hopefully we will be planting in February or March. I divided the garden to create a terrace and three different lawn areas, the lawns are set on different levels so as to reduce the effect of the slope. The main challenge was to contend with…
Contemporary topiary – Bath
This is a project for a client wishing for a low maintenance contemporary garden. Division of space was achieved using topiary forms, both yew and hornbeam – yew was trained into shapes inspired by Barbara Hepworth’s sculptures. Pleached hedges, an oak pergola, a fairy lit arbour, fire pit and an infinity pool were other main features…
Garden
‘At this time of year, if something does not appear to be growing then it is probably being eaten’ – that was my thought today as I looked over my young willow cuttings, in leaf and apparently healthy but not getting very big; closer examination revealed discrete nibbing of the shoots, Oooh those rabbits…
In the vegetable garden
I am just back from a few days away, and as usual, after unloading the car, I head straight for the garden. As I bend down to the soil to root out those weeds, the smell of the earth and the chattering birds in in the trees above, soothe my soul, washing away the hubbub of the day. …
Low maintenance
In this raised front garden the lawn has been replaced with gravel and low maintenance planting to provide year round interest as well as a good source of pollen and nectar for insects. The lavander and catmint require clipping once a year, the neat mounds of lavander provide structure throughout the winter months whilst primulas…
Garden for bee keeper – Shepton Mallet
This garden has an outlook onto rolling Somerset hills and was commisioned by a bee keeper. Local stone was used to create a curved dry stone retaining wall, the planting was more formal (blues and purples) nearest the house merging to less formal dogwoods for winter colour and structure further away from the house. An emphasis on underplanting…