A garden for morning, noon and night

The Brief

The brief was to create a Garden Design and Landscaping scheme that complemented the customers internal living space. The garden needed to be contemporary, private, an enjoyable space to relax and entertain in. It also needed to be low maintenance.

The garden faces west so we needed to really make the most of the sun throughout the day creating an evening entertaining area and a morning breakfast area. The customers both love to sun bathe so this also needed to be taken into account.

The customers wanted to keep the summer house (which has power and water), but they also required a new shed, new greenhouse and a compost area. They also wanted to have a water feature and lighting throughout the garden as well as a hot tub positioned close to the house.

The design

The garden is on multi levels and required substantial terracing to create some usable, level areas. Access to this garden was somewhat difficult (up steps and only 1.1m wide), so we needed to create a garden design and landscaping scheme that remodelled the landmass that already existed ensuring we wouldn’t have to take any spoil out of the garden, just bring in some top soil.

The end result

We created a raised feature planting bed made from from concrete rendered and capped in sandstone. This feature bed will house a beautiful 100 year old olive tree. There are two sandstone areas off the house, then a step up onto the first area of decking, and on to the second area of decking where there is a hot tub and seating area. Beds planted with ornamental grasses split the two deck areas.

There are steps up to the lawn which has a stepping stone paths to the summer house, shed and greenhouse. The summer house decking has been extended to create an area for relaxing in the morning sun and features a fun jumping water feature. We chose polished sandstone for the paving and yellow Balau for the decking. We used Rolawn for the turf and metal edging to keep the lawn in a perfect shape where it is not edged with the wall.

The bold four level design for this garden balances with the house and makes the most of the available space. We used unconventional shapes that work well with the original levels to achieve a layout that best fit with the client’s needs.

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