Modern style in the countryside
Chobham, Surrey
“It’s hard to capture the beauty on the phone. But I just wanted to share some pics. The garden is looking simply beautiful. We are so happy with it and the mix of cottage plants but planted in a contemporary way as not to feel cluttered. You have ticked both our wishes 🙌 we are really enjoying the garden so thank you!”
What an amazing space to be able to work with! More than three-quarters of an acre of gardens in a gorgeous family house on the outskirts of Chobham in Surrey. The lovely clients had lived with their inherited garden for a number of years but were keen to introduce some design flair and make the space more inviting and attractive.
By the time we got involved a design had already been created but it just didn’t tick the right boxes and didn’t inspire the client to invest the required money. This surprised me somewhat; I would say that my role as designer is never to impose a design on to our client, but to collaborate, inspire, and create a piece of work together. Luckily in this case the client already had his sketchbook out and gave me a sense of what he was really looking for.
The focus was primarily on redeveloping the patio space attached to the rear of the garden and to create an ornamental garden area attached to this. For the time being the rest of the land could be left to the children running amok. There were no real, fundamental issues to deal with but for a pathway lined with flowerbeds running askew to the house, and the existing patio was in need of serious renovation and reshaping.
Immediately we set about delivering design ideas that:-
Gave shape, structure, and zones to the new patio
Properly framed a formal garden space with planting beds
Incorporated planters bordering the patio and framing…
…a new pathway properly perpendicular to the house; also directly aligned with the client’s office space so he had a direct perspective view down and along the garden
A pergola walkway along this path to further emphasise the journey into the garden and provide more vertical growing space (although this hasn’t made it into the final build… yet…)
The hard landscaping itself was delivered by the excellent J M Landscapes who worked hard and meticulously to deliver a superb finish to the patio, pathways, new lawn and planters.
The second stage of this garden’s development was to create a planting plan that satisfied two very different perspectives. One of the husband-and-wife team was very keen on attractive, naturalistic, floral planting. The other preferred order, regularity, symmetry and neatness. How on earth to deal with both?!
The compromise we achieved was creating a short section pattern of beautiful, herbaceous flowers including Salvia nemorosa ‘Caradonna’, Echinops bannaticus ‘Blue Globe’, Eryngium alpinum 'Blue Star', Astrantia major 'Pink Pride' & ‘Shaggy’, and Geranium ‘Red Admiral’, amongst others. Structure was provided by a range of ferns such as Dryopteris affinis and repeated punctuation of the evergreen Euonymus japonicus 'Jean Hughes'. This section pattern was then repeated with regularity around the borders of the formal garden. Running through these sections, tying them all together, was a river of the soft & tactile Stipa tenuissima grass.
The two planters framing the entrance to the pathway had as their main content a pair of delicate Lace-leaf Japanese maples (Acer palmatum dissectum). These were underplanted with the stunning Japanese Painted Fern (Athyrium niponicum pictum) and a number of Stonecrop (Sedum) varieties and Houseleeks (Sempervivum hybrids). A few occasions of Creeping Thyme (Thymus serphyllum) surrounded the corten steel bowl water feature kissed lightly by some of the weeping branches of the Japanese maple.
Lastly, a row of Flamingo Willow (Salix integra 'Hakuro-nishiki') half-standards framed the newly-laid driveway. These were infilled with New Zealand privet (Griselinia littoralis) to create more of a privacy barrier, and Mexican Fleabane (Erigeron karvinskianus) to provide a flowery groundcover.
