Large Garden with Home Office in Beckenham

Overview

This garden in Beckenham is very long and has an incredibly open aspect, with little shade and low boundary fences. The clients had installed a garden room, which very quickly in Lockdown had become a home office. Unusually for Beckenham the soil was very sandy and free draining.

The Brief

The clients collected street art and wanted a garden that reflected their design aesthetic and quirky style. They didn’t want a ‘boring’ patio by the garden room, and it needed to be big enough for socialising, sunbathing, a hot tub, water feature and a basketball net! They also didn’t want to see the whole garden from the house and the planting needed to be colourful.

Part of the way through the design phase, it become necessary to consider an all-weather path to reach the garden room/home office, as the client had been told by their employer that working from home would become permanent.

Design Concept

We created a semi-circular design for the patio with two different colours of granite paving and a small contrasting stone water feature. I added a palisade screen using oak sleepers to obscure the hot tub area and add some privacy and shelter. The granite colour was picked up again in the granite boulder gabions which act as a retaining wall to the upper slope.

We turfed the garden and added lots of colourful sun-loving plants, the gravel acts as an effective mulch, to help hold moisture in the sandy soil, as well as creating a modern aesthetic. And of course, we added lots of organic matter too. For screening we added multi-stemmed Cercis Forest Pansies and an Acer to obscure the view and add intrigue and seasonal interest.

The gravel path works in all seasons and the lighting scheme lights up the pathway to the office all year round. The festoon lighting creates an ambient feel for entertaining in the dark lower reaches of the garden. Whereas the small up-light spots between the palisade uprights add drama and privacy.