From start to finish

Finished garden from patio
Finished garden

Before

Finished garden
Finished garden
Finished garden
Finished garden cat view

Before

Finished garden cat view
Finished garden cat view
Finished garden cat view
Finished garden cat view

Large Family Garden, Manor Way Beckenham

Overview

As you can see from the before images the garden of this Arts and Crafts House had beautiful trees which added great structure, the Acer by the house, was a major asset. However, the rest of the garden was tired, with overgrown shrubs, damaged crazy paving and dead box hedges.

The Brief

The clients had just had a large conservatory kitchen built so views from the house needed to be improved. They wanted to add a Breeze House and a water feature into the garden, as well as colour via planting. In addition, the design had to consider, access for the client’s wheelchair bound son, who likes to sit at the back of the garden and particularly enjoys being able to run his hands in the water.

Design Concept

The central back room of the house was the regularly used family room, facing the steps up to the lawn. The design concept maximised this central viewpoint, by adding a wide rill so the eye could be drawn up the garden to the fountain wall and pond at the top.

Hedging in both Yew and Portuguese laurel gives additional structure, we also included buttress hedging to the right had long border, as it had more perennials focussed planting and all the paving was replaced with sandstone.

A multi-stem Prunus serrula was placed at the opposite side of the garden to the Breeze House to give seasonal interest, block the view of the bus stop sign from the kitchen and over time will balance out the symmetry.