This Essex Garden Design takes inspiration from 1960s motifs, seeking to divide the garden into three separate areas with a recurringz circular theme throughout. Flooring in the space will take the form of three interconnected rectangular sections.
Each section will be edged with black limestone setts laid in a stretcher pattern (end-to-end) and will contain a mixture of black limestone paved circles and hoggin circles of various sizes, to create an ornate and visually stimulating  focal point to the garden. Each circle will be edged with black limestone setts to create clear definition to the design. The space around the limestone and hoggin circles will be planted with creeping thyme, that will spread to over time to create a soft sea of colour and fragrance around the hard surface areas. The paved areas will also benefit from three stunning stainless steel sphere water features (3 different sizes). Each sphere will be installed with a black sett circle edge to surround and finished with a mulch of blue glass chips around its base. The garden will be given a sense of privacy  and intrigue with the addition of 6 bespoke  screens installed at intervals around the patio  areas. Constructed from blue perspex panels installed on timber posts, these screens will create an impressive and colourful backdrop to the space.

The timber pergola will be given additional screening with a series of funky ’70s disco-inspired hangings installed on the overhead beams. The pergola will further benefit from a suspended 60s styled rattan ball chair.

Lush, tropical planting will help screen the garden from the houses beyond. A large cordyline australis in a tall zinc planted will take pride of place in the centre of the large hoggin circle. Three 80cm box balls will continue the circular theme through the planting beds, interspersed with tall grasses and a selection of herbaceous perennials.

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We were contacted by a couple looking for some garden design advice for their garden in Devon. The existing garden has structure, however it is does not suit their circumstances and they would like to revise the design. They love curves and spirals and would like this to be the main motif throughout the space. They also wish to grow vegetables and would like to make more use of the area adjoining the existing swimming pool. An existing mature hedge splits the garden in two and needs to be removed to allow maximum usability.

The new design features a spiral of hoggin adjoining the back door, big enough to accomodate a large table and eight chairs and accentuated by a curved herb bed. A pergola running down the left hand side of the garden brings height to the  space.  Beyond the pergola is an elliptical lawn which helps to widen the garden and provide a backdrop for planting beds. A slate pathway arcs around the edge of the elliptical lawn.

A slate monolith sculpture provides screening between the front and back of the garden, providing a focal point from the back of the house. The hoggin spiral flooring terminates at the swimming pool, where it will be wide enough to accommodate sunloungers. Two existing palm trees to either side of the pool help to frame the entrance to the pool.

If you would like some free garden design advice, please do feel free to get in touch.

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Add a big dash of colour to a wall with outdoor canvas.

If you are looking to add a big dash of colour to an unslightly garden wall – or even wish to make a screen in the garden – using garden canvases are a great solution. The Big Art Canvas company are able to supply you with the perfect masterpiece to hang on your outside wall. The great thing about outdoor canvases is that you can select any image you like – something personal, something abstract, a landscape, something botanical, or even a reproduction of an exisiting masterpiece. Great for adding big blocks of colour, or covering an unsightly wall, they are portable and in most cases reasonably priced, so you can take them with you when you move or leave them where they are and commission new canvases that fit your new garden. The canvas is completely weatherproof and guaranteed not to fade.

I prefer using them hung as a series of 3 for creating a bigger impact, however they do work equally as well on their own.  See them in situ on our Funky roof terrace design.

Use in a series for bigger impact

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This town landscape focuses on the strong geometric lines present in the mahogany bookshelves.  This concept is ideal for a small town garden, and could have a myriad of uses built into it’s design.  It is palindromic in it’s design and would work in either direction or as a mirror image of itself. A patio, increasing in size and constructed from large sandstone slabs, leads from the exit point of the house into the garden. The shape reflects the staggered motif that dominates the bookshelves. The backdrop to this patio is a replica of the bookshelves as garden feature, with deep shelves created from chunky exterior grade timber giving plenty of opportunity for the client to tailor fill to taste with such sundries as cobbles enclosed with wire mesh, planting, ornaments, objet d’art or  whatever the client decides. The last alcove of the unit is an archway leading to the rest of beyond.

The second half of the garden is a mirror of the first, connected by a path, with a second alcove unit offering a striking entrance to the area. The rest of the garden will be laid to lawn with deep borders suitable for filling with simple evergreen shrubs for a low maintenance garden. Uplighting the timber structures combined with downlighting within the alcoves makes for dramatic lifting scheme opportunities within this garden design.

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Doing a proper survey on garden can be one of the most difficult parts of the design process. While many people may feel they may have the confidence to ‘have a go’ at creating the design, actually measuring the land to get the plan to scale can prove a daunting task. Below is a detailed guide to the various things you will need to do to produce an accurate and useful plan of your existing garden on to which you will be able to draw your new design. We will try to keep it as simple as possible. However, be realistic about what you are confident in achieving. Some of the methods we describe will work best with fairly basic square or rectangular suburban gardens. If your plot exceeds an acre and has many levels, boundaries or is a very odd shape, you may need to employ the services of a professional surveyor instead.

Measuring the space:

You will ideally need a long tape reel – a 30 metre surveyors tape, available from most DIY stores for around £10 – £15, should be sufficient unless you have a very large garden – and a 5 metre metal tape measure. Roughly draw out the layout of your garden so you have a template on which to mark your measurements, include the house and any side returns.

Start with the house. Mark all windows, doors, down pipes and drains on your plan. If your house does not have a flat facade you will also need to mark any returns, alcoves, posts, etc. Once you have done this, start measuring the back of the house. You will probably find that the metal tape measure is the easiest for this part.

Measure from one boundary where it joins the house to the first feature (door, window, return etc) and mark this measurement on your plan. Always draw measurements in mm to avoid confusion. Next measure and mark length of the feature itself, not forgetting for doors and windows to mark which way they open and in what direction. Repeat the process for each feature, measuring and marking the distance between each feature and the length of the feature itself. For accuracy, you should also measure the total width of the house façade, the width of any gap between the house and the boundary, and the width of the entire garden along the house (from boundary to boundary). Once you have taken these measurements, measure the length of both side boundaries from the house to the bottom of the garden using the surveyors tape.

Finally, measure the width of the garden along the back boundary and mark on your plan. If your house has a flat façade and the lengths of your side boundaries or the widths of the garden at either end are different then it may mean that one or more of your boundaries has a slant to it. It can be difficult for someone inexperienced in surveying to determine the exact line of a boundary that is not square to the house. There are methods, such as triangulation, which can be used to work out the angle of the line, but this can be tricky to get right if you have not done it before. If you can determine, using a builders square, that one of the side boundaries is perpendicular to the house, then it should be fairly easy to work out the angle of the other boundary. Simply draw the perpendicular boundary on your plan and then mark the width of the garden at both ends as measured from the perpendicular boundary. Draw a line between the two points to give the approximate position of the other boundary. While this is not foolproof, it should give a good to-scale approximation of the shape of your garden, which for the purposes of your re-design will be adequate – you are not building a house or other project that would require millimetre accurate precision, so there is a reasonable margin of error.

Once you have plotted the basic layout of your garden, you can start to mark existing features on your plan. Usually, it is only necessary to mark things that will be retained in the redesign, such as manholes or trees and other large plants. If you do not intend to keep the feature and it will be removed during clearance, then do not waste your time marking it on the plan – you will just end up in a cluttered and confusing mess. To accurately mark an item on your basic layout, you will always need a measurement from two different fixed points at 90 degree angles to each other– ideally one from a straight side boundary and one from the back of the house. Try to avoid using one feature as a measuring point for another feature, as this can lead to confusion.

Levels:

If your garden has a noticeable slope or existing terraced levels then you will need to mark these on your plan to ensure that they are taken into account in your re-design. For existing terraces, measure along one side of the garden from the back of the house to the edge of your terrace, and make a note of the position of the edge of the terrace at this point. Do the same along the other side of the garden. Draw a dotted line between the two points and this will give you the profile of the terrace edge. Measure from the top of the terrace wall to the floor on the level below to give you the height of the terrace.

There are a few ways to work out the gradient of a slope, with varying degrees of accuracy. However, for all but the most complicated slopes and designs, you will not need pinpoint accuracy – simply knowing the rough difference in height between one end of the garden and the other should be sufficient. For some of the methods you will need a helper.

The simplest, and least accurate, way of determining the gradient of a garden is to follow the line of the boundary fences or walls. In most cases if there is more than a very slight fall to the garden, the boundaries are likely to be stepped to take the slope into account. This means that the fence panels or walls will have been installed so that they are level for a distance and then at a certain point there is a step down so that the next run of level boundary is lower than the previous. If the slope is distinct, or it is a long garden, there are likely to be more than one step along the boundary. Simply measure the height of each step down along the entire boundary – that is the distance between the top of the lower fence panel or wall to the top of the one above – and add them all together. This will give you a rough indication of the height difference between the top and bottom of your garden. However, this will only work if each section of boundary is level. If there is a gradient to the fence or wall itself, then using this method will be wildly inaccurate .

Another, more accurate method is to use a line level. This is simply a long piece of string onto which a spirit bubble is hung. Attach one end of string to a fixed point at the highest end of the garden – a post or the back of the house for example – and measure the distance between this point and the floor. Run the string to the other, lower end of the space and pull it tight, with the spirit bubble hanging somewhere in the middle of the string. Keeping the string tight, move the string up or down until the bubble is in the centre of the body of the line level (this is where you need a helper to read the bubble while you adjust the line) and measure the distance between the end of the string at the lowest point of the garden and the floor. Now simply subtract the distance between line and floor at the highest point from the distance between line and floor at the lowest point to give you the height difference between the two ends of the garden.

The most accurate way to determine the height difference between points in a garden is to use a site level. In simple terms this is a telescopic lens set on a tripod, through which the user looks at a marker rod held vertically at a certain point in the space (for our purposes this would be the lowest point) and reads the height markings (in metres and centimetres) on the rod against sight lines on the lens itself. This reading is then compared against a datum or benchmark reading, which will usually be one taken at floor level against the house, to give the height difference between the two points. While this is the most accurate method of taking a level measurement, it is also the one that requires the most skill. While it is not difficult to obtain accurate readings using a site level, a certain amount of practice will be needed. Site levels can be hired quite cheaply, and the hirer will usually be happy to give a quick lesson in their use.

Aspect:

This is the direction your garden is facing. The most favourable aspect is the ‘south facing garden’. It is important you know your aspect as this will determine the best placement of specific plants as well as preferred locations for patios.

The simplest way to find your aspect is with a compass. If you don’t own a compass many smart phones now have apps with a compass feature. To find your aspect using a compass stand with your back to the house and find north. Draw the direction of north in relation to the back of your house on your plan. Whatever direction the compass needle is pointing at directly away from the house is your garden’s aspect.

Another less accurate way of determining the aspect is to type your postcode into Google maps. North always points to the top of the screen, therefore you should be able to see which way your garden is facing in relation to north and work out your aspect accordingly. This is particularly useful if you are unable to physically get to the site, for example if you are considering buying a property and want to know which way the garden faces.

If you are unable or unwilling to try and determine the aspect of your garden, you should still take time to try and work out which are its sunniest, and shadiest, parts. You don’t want to find that the sundeck on which you have placed your expensive handmade loungers only gets 15 minutes of direct sun at around 4.30 in the afternoon. Bear in mind that the relative positions of the sun, and therefore the parts of the garden which get the most sunshine, will be different in the summer and winter months.

Soil analysis:

Many plants like certain soil conditions. The RHS has a particularly detailed library of plants and their preferred conditions. This information is useful when selecting plants to ensure their survival. There are two ways of detecting what type of soil you have:

1)    Look at what is currently growing in your and your neighbours’ gardens. If shrubs such as rhododendron, azalea and pierces are thriving the chances are you have acidic soil. Most woodland soil is acidic and these plants are prevalent in woody areas. If you know anything about the history of the land, for instance it was once an orchard for a country estate, this can also help you to guess at the most likely soil type.

2)    By far the most accurate way of determining your soil type is to do a chemical PH test. These can be obtained very cheaply from most DIY or garden centres, are very easy to carry out and you will have the results in a matter of moments. It is worth doing a test at least a couple of places in the garden as sites can vary from one end to another and you could have a mixture of alkaline in one area and acidic. Once you have determined what type of soil you have, check on the RHS website or speak to your local garden centre about the most suitable plants for that particular ph level

Damp Course 

If you intend to install a new hard surface, such as paving or decking, against a house you must always take the property’s damp course into account to avoid potential problems caused by rainwater ingress into the property. As a rule, the finished level of any hard surface against a building should be a minimum 150mm below the level of the building’s damp course, to prevent rainwater splash back from seeping through the wall above the damp course into the building interior. If it is not feasible to install the hard surface at this level, then a protective barrier such as waterproof render, flashing or a cladding material, should be installed along all affected parts of the wall to at least 150mm above the finished level of the flooring surface. However, this should be avoided wherever possible.

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We were invited recently to produced a garden design in Essex, for a beautiful south facing garden with loads of potential.

The client has recently bought this newly renovated house with a sizeable garden. The renovations included partial landscaping of the garden and the client is happy with the majority of the existing landscaping. However, the majority of the garden is currently covered with uneven grass and the client has requested extensive planting to add interest, as well as some restructuring of the layout of the existing decking. The area at the bottom of the garden will remain as-is, possibly to be re-organised at a later date.

The garden takes influence from calm modern Japanese garden design. The lawn will be levelled, re-laid and shaped to resemble a series of squares set on an angle along the length of the space. These lawns will be bisected by an Indian sandstone pathway zigzagging diagonally down the garden.

The top terrace level of the existing decking (adjoining the patio doors) will be extended out further into the middle of the decked area and deeper terraced steps will be constructed to allow for an easier, safer entry into the garden. The steps will join the sandstone pathway at the end of the decked area. A Japanese cloud tree set in a planting bed to the left of the first dog-leg of the pathway will create a stunning focal point when viewed from the house and set the tone for the rest of the garden.

Two timber framed archways, inspired by modern Japanese garden screens, enhance the Japanese garden theme. The first creates an entrance to the rest of the garden, with a second arch repeated further down the space. Illuminated planters stepped in at even degrees on the patio and planted with tall bamboos, help with screening form the garden next door, as does the planting of Acer palmatum var. dissectum ‘Garnet’ (a variety of Japanese maple.)

Planting is soft and leafy, creating a calming, serene ambience. Concentrating on leaf form and colour rather than showy blooms, this garden will feature specimen planting using staple Japanese show stoppers surrounded by complimentary species to further highlight the tranquillity of the space. A Wisteria will help to soften the existing gazebo, while Acers planted along either side of the garden will add height and lend the design the stunning autumnal colours that Japanese gardens are famous for.

Lighting in the garden will be subtle but striking. The archways will be illuminated with down lights, with spotlights giving accent lighting to the specimen planting throughout the beds. Gentle low voltage spotlights sprinkled throughout the planting beds will provide a general wash across the rest of the planting scheme. The illuminated planters will provide more gentle yet eye-catching lighting nearer the house. The Japanese cloud tree will be up-lit with spotlights to provide a stunning talking point when the sun goes down.

After presentation a few revisions had to be implemented

replaced paving with decking to cope with soakaway

Revised archway for extra screening

revised the steps to add extra access to lower area

Added additional lawn

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 This London Garden Design for Greenwich we put together for a client back in 2007. Sadly it was never commissioned for a build as they subsequently moved abroad. Here it sees the light of day as this months featured garden.

The entrance to the main garden will be framed by two rendered block raised beds constructed at right angles to each other and painted to a colour of the client’s choice.

These beds will each feature a decorative screen constructed from a four inch oak frame with coloured Perspex inlay (client to choose colour), while an imposing, chunky oak timber arch constructed between the two beds will create an impressive entrance to the space.

The arch will lead directly to a black granite sett pathway which doglegs around a central lawn. To the left, a long and impressive decorative screen, comprising oak frames with alternating Perspex and rusted iron mesh inlays, will separate the main garden from the children’s area. The children’s area itself will consist of a large area of luxury artificial lawn and a bespoke blackboard installed on the left hand wall.

The pathway will continue around the garden to an oak decking futon-style feature seat with armrests and a high 2m back. This feature seat will offer ample space for 2 –3 people to relax and socialise and will benefit from an air dried oak pergola to provide shade on a sunny day. Optional weatherproof cushions in a colour of the clients choice would provide added comfort to this laid back area.

From the pergola/feature seat, the path will continue down the right hand side of the space to join the the main seating area. This will consist of a square section of oak decking, laid in a diagonal pattern and edged with black limestone setts. A simple yet stunning oak cube structure, designed to reflect the shape of the glass cube extension to the house, will enclose this deck and create an imposing focal point to the space.

This structure will offer opportunity to add a shade sail, fabric hangings and other decorative panels, to add  colour, privacy and shelter under which to dine.

Diagonally to the right of the main deck area, in the corner nearest the garage, a smaller section of decking will house a bespoke bar. Constructed from rendered blocks (painted a colour of the client’s choice) with a decked counter top, this bar will be complemented by three tall oak bar stools. The back of the bar will be left open to allow the client to install a sink and outdoor fridge if desired. A backlit Perspex panel will adorn the wall behind the bar to add a splash of colour, while the client could install various bar ephemera along the garage wall at a later date if desired. The Perspex panel could be printed with an optional pattern or image of the clients choice. The front edge of the lawn will offer the ideal spot to house a sculpture to be added at a later date. 

Planting in the space will be bold with a predominately green and white scheme. Four large cordyline australis will feature in zinc planters, while climbers will adorn the mesh screens and boundary walls. Hardy evergreen coupled with showy herbaceous perennials are sure to guarantee year round interest.

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This garden design for Hertfordshire allows for a great scope in planting. These clients contacted us as they are both keen gardeners, but were struggling with idea for their outdoor space. A large town garden design was required and they were struggling with how to marry hard and soft landscaping in their scheme.

Earth designs proposes that a decked area leads from the conservatory out into the garden. Large enough accommodate the table and chairs it provides a linear flow from the flooring inside the conservatory and helps to continue the lines from outside in. The amount of existing lawn is reduced to a large circle of lawn (this was something they requested) and upended railway sleepers and slate edging give clean, easy-mow contemporary borders. Approx 40cm of each railway sleepers will be visible above ground, creating a series of perch seats all the way round the edge of the lawn. The sleeper edging also forms a barrier to prevent their children’s football ending up in the beds (a frequent problem for this couple.) An arched pergola installed around one third of the circular lawn provides further delineation and adds drama and height. Beneath this pergola a curved bench seat will act as a ‘subs’ bench for those all important home football matches and will allow the simply as a garden bench.

A curved self-binding aggregate pathway will traverse the length of the garden, bordered by deep beds to allow for maximum planting. Arching back on itself, it leads to a paved circle patio. This area would be used as a more intimate space, and with the inclusion of a daybed or other items of outdooe furniture it could become a desirable place to relax and escape. Alternatively, budget allowing, a dramatic curved wall could be erected, and painted a bright colour to allow for a dynamic backdrop to the patio as well as the planting bed on the other side. Holes cut within the wall could allow the display of object d’art and other outdoor ephemera – the big block of colour this would offer will provide vital colour in the winter months.

Planting should be big and bold, the deep beds allowing for block planting as well as large shrubs and a wide range of different leaf colour and texture. Being such plant lovers and enjoying gardening so much, I wanted the clients to have the opportunity to really flex their horticultural muscles and experiment with some larger specimens than simple boundary borders would allow.

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