We were asked to look at an area of an existing garden attached to a beautiful Georgian era property in Nottinghamshire. Our clients asked us to re-imagine the space, making it a beautiful and flexible space for entertaining, lounging and dining. Our clients requested a contemporary pergola that matches the new black aluminium windows, a sunken seating area, and a space for their garden bar.
Our design team started by zoning the garden into separate areas, a raised deck for dining, a sunken seating area complete with a Cor-Ten steel water feature, and a patio large enough to house the pergola for when some coverage was required.
The material palette was carefully selected to compliment the existing textures and materials used for the building. Tumbled limestone was used for the paving and sunken seating area, while Cor-Ten steel accents were scattered through the space to pick up the reddish brown tones of the existing brick. We sourced similar bricks to edge the planting beds that were used to edge the existing path around the house, and clad the tired white-rendered boundary wall with cedar to give the wall a new lease of life.
Our clients, inspired by historical white gardens, requested that the planting should be kept to a palette of whites and pale pinks with some pops of blue and purple scattered through. We used a mixture of grasses, perennials, shrubs and bulbs to create a scheme that would give year round structure, colour and interest while remaining low maintenance. Hand-sculpted Yew domes were carefully placed through the space to provide structure and to link the newly design and planted area with the wider space.
