3 ‘More’ wishes for the garden – more space for sun, more space for line and more space for storage

Posted by Owen Chubb Garden Landscapes Limited in Advice, Garden & Outdoors, Uncategorised with 1 Comment

Before: A corner ideal for enjoying evening sun is wasted with garden shed

Before: A rather cluttered looking but spacious area for the rotary clothes line

Not all garden design or landscaping projects aspire to grandiose objectives. Sometimes the functional requirements (making the area look better, easier to use and most importantly easy to maintain) take precedence over the more subjective aesthetic elements of looking pretty. That is not to say that a functional space must be boring, on the contrary, a little creative imagination during the design stage and a careful selection of materials and finishes can produce surprisingly good results.

Another point worth making is that a new design need not be implemented all at once. Often there are several reasons why it may make more sense to implement the garden design in a series of phases.What’s important is that resources are planned and spent wisely and any duplication of effort should be avoided at all costs. There are no reasons why any well designed and prudently implemented project cannot be undertaken in an efficient and cost effective manner.

In this project which coming shortly after the completion of a large house extension, the focus was on three elements, provide a nice patio from which to enjoy the evening sun, improve the area around the rotary line which had become very disjointed and provide additional improved garden storage. The latter requirement was easy, a larger less obtrusive garden shed in the least disruptive position. The old garden shed in contrast occupied the sunniest corner for late afternoon/evening sunshine. How peculiar but a very common mistake is that? Similarly despite the garden being large, space had become very fragmented not helped by poorly positioned trees and shrubs, which conspired to create lots of small spaces and mostly unusable for anything of significance. In a word, this site, lacked ‘manners’ and lacked a coherent arrangement in which space was used wisely but in a more practical fashion to create a result which was seamless and as a bonus provided some inviting visual stimulus.

First things first, site was cleared, and works proceeded with the construction of raised bed to provide an effective raised platform for planting around the evening patio. Trellis screening provided visual screening but yet allowed the light to stream into the area, the work area around rotary line was overhauled and re-surfaced with pebble chippings framed on all sides to prevent any unnecessary drift. A sweeping pathway linking all three areas (garden shed, rotary line and rear patio) took the eye seamlessly along the route. Planting featured a range of low growing evergreen but colourful shrubs which were complemented with seasonal accent colours of the various herbaceous perennials.

The results speak for themselves, a striking new order blending distinct areas in a seamless but eye catching fashion. A very good start to implementing future aspects of the new design.