This home and garden was situated in the countryside, on a high ridge with a stunning outlook onto a rural landscape. The client renovated the old farmyard and barns, transforming the building into an open plan home with huge picture windows framing magnificent views. Sheltered by stone walls, the courtyard provided the perfect opportunity to create a gravel garden with perennial planting that would attract insect and bees.
Our clients brief was to create a ‘gardeners garden’ with space to relax and take in the borrowed landscape.
The existing stone walling that enclosed the garden had to be rebuilt and provided the perfect shelter from the wind, promoting a slightly warmer climate where the perennials could establish, bloom and flourish. From the main house, split levels were created to contend with the sloping site offering an opportunity to create generous paved areas for seating and dining using natural sandstone complementing the barn walls. Plentiful and textured planting fill the staggered raised beds creating a dreamy relaxed mood with great seasonal interest. The gentle curved brick steps between the levels creates an elegant transition between different levels in the garden.
Material choices of gravel, red brick and sandstone were essential to promote sense that the house has always been there and is integral to the expanding landscape beyond the stone walls. Free draining gravel is the perfect medium for the beautiful naturalistic planting that bleeds from the beds out onto the paths. The planting choices including Acheillea, Rudbekia and hardy grasses which add texture, feathery structure a softness against the stone walling. The planting helps emphasis the link with the local countryside and provide plenty of nectar and pollen for visiting insects. Trees were also placed strategically to screen an unsightly telecom aerial but also leads the eye around the garden towards the garden gate and scenery beyond the walls.