When we moved here, the garden looked very small because it was a mass of overgrown conifers and shrubs. The shed greenhouse and playhouse were in an awful state so we couldn’t let the children play outdoors it seemed too dangerous’ says Shara.
We started extending and renovating the house almost immediately. As I was on site to answer the builders questions planning the garden redesign seemed to be a useful way of passing the time.
The previous owners hadn’t worked on the outdoor space in years so there was no formal planting or layout.
‘With 12 different types of conifer – some as tall as 60ft it was hard to know where to begin’ says Shara. ‘We decided that the best way forward was to strip out everything and start again so we hired a tree surgeon to remove the conifers while a landscaping company cleared the buildings and shrubs rotovated the land and added topsoil to improve the soil before returfing.
The garden began to take shape as the landscapers put up new fencing and a shed and added a composter. ‘I loved watching the new space evolving’ says Shara.
She and Craig found the design process relatively easy. They used semi-circular decking to cover a tree stump with large circles of lawn radiating from it and created beds in the remaining sections.
‘The garden seemed long but narrow so we designed the grass circles to give it width and to counterbalance the straight lines of the house’ says Shara.
There are two levels to the garden as the couple excavated an area near the house during work on the extension. They decided to use a retaining wall rather than level off the space, which meant they could create a sunken area with decking at the same level as the kitchen so that the two spaces link when the doors are open.
The lawn was laid just before they moved in. ‘It was freshly cut and delivered the following day, which gave it a great start,’ says Shara. ‘At that point we decided to put the rest of the makeover on hold, but we contacted Caroline Tilston of The Oak Studio during the winter to come up with a planting design for the following spring.’
The couple chose a lime and purple colour theme with a scattering of pink and designated a small border to be a vegetable patch lined with fruit trees.
‘It was important to have colour all year round, so we specified bulbs for spring, flowering plants in summer and a box of coloured grasses to keep some structure in the garden over winter,’ says Shara, who chose the plants on Caroline’s list online at Crocus and Ken Muir which saved traipsing around garden centres.
Costs
Labour £2,650
Landscaping £2,556
Garden design £600
Planting £1,264
Garden structures £6,804
Seating (hanging and ball chairs) £1,008
TOTAL £14,882
No comments:
Post a Comment