Garden Design - Collier Row, Essex RM5
The Brief
The plot is a small, tired looking, urban back garden. Its boundaries are a mish-mash of different fences and walls in need of replacement or rejuvenation. The existing flooring consists of reasonably good quality paving, which could be utilised in the redesign to keep costs down. The client has requested a low maintenance space and specifically does not want lawn.
The Solution
This is a fairly organic design, featuring a series of interconnected circular areas of hard flooring to provide ample room for seating and relaxation while maximising the available planting space.
The existing fences and posts will be removed and replaced along both side boundaries with new shiplap panels, while bamboo screening will be erected to disguise the brick/block wall running along the back of the space. The rest of the space will be cleared and the existing paving set aside for re-use.
The centre of the space will feature a gravel circle edged with brick, large enough to accommodate a table and chairs for alfresco dining. This area will also feature a 12ft crab apple tree planted off centre within the gravel. Adjoining the main circle will be an crescent of brick retaining a bed of loose cobbles, constructed so that it seems to 'grow' from the main circle.
At the bottom of the main circle we will see a smaller circle of crazy paving (using the client's exiting paving), also edged with brick and with an crescent of loose cobbles adjoining it on the right. In the top right of the space we will find a second circle of brick-edged crazy paving, joined to the main gravel circle by a railway sleeper bridge running over a crescent shaped butyl-lined pond. This pond will also be brick edged and will feature two pumps, one on either side of the sleeper bridge, placed to produce twin water spouts to imbue the space with the gentle sound of running water.
The area in the bottom right hand corner of the garden will be set aside for a small storage unit, and will be accessible from the crazy paved circle beside the house by a series of stepping-stones constructed from the existing paving.
A wild-life oriented planting scheme will provide the finishing touches to the space. Featuring hot colours, reds and yellows with splashes of purple, the flora has been chosen to provide year round interest and consists almost exclusively of perennials and evergreen shrubs and trees to keep maintenance to a minimum.