Stoke Bishop

This garden is a lovely sunny site with one or two mature trees but when I arrived it had little else to recommend it. There was a rather sorry-looking astro turf lawn which was pushing up weeds, and a deck which although new, wasn’t particularly attractive. The paint was peeling off and it felt unstable under foot.

The client is a keen gardener but has a bit of shrub habit, so there was an eclectic selection of many different planters with shrubs in which left the garden feeling disjointed and messy. The beds also contained a large number of shrubs, some of which we could re-use but some were not bringing much to the party.

In terms of the design, the client was clear they didn’t want a lawn, astro or otherwise, so this left a large space to fill. The resulting plan gives the garden a real face-lift, with private places to sit and enjoy the sun as it moves round, whilst making the garden and the house feel much more cohesive by picking up on the colours of the brick in the house, and using something similar in colour for the curving walls and the new decking.

It was important to the client that the garden was easy to navigate as they go into their twilight years, so there are hand rails, wide steps and pathways, with the garden on one smooth level. Raised beds make it easier to garden, whilst the deck gives a great platform from which to view it all.

New trees have been installed for focal points - a beautiful liquidambar and a new dark leaved Acer to go with the dark brick work. Some shrubs were allowed back in, and a limited number of planters!

Still some work to be done - perennial plants will go in later next spring and the summerhouse is to be painted.