Redesigning a London garden

Redesigning a London garden

Now that I've shown you how I designed my own garden, I'm going to show you how I planned and designed the garden of my client, Rita Konig. Rita was heavily involved in the creative process and was an absolute joy to work with from beginning to end.

Redesigning Rita's garden

One of the biggest design choices we made in this garden was to change the position of the garden gate. The gate originally led visitors from a side street, right into the beating heart of the garden, which felt like quite a public way to enter a private space.

We also removed two low-grade trees, which were small enough to remove without having to apply for planning permission.

One of the key things that Rita wanted was for us to create a sense of privacy along the northern boundary of her garden. There were already a lot of climbers along this boundary wall, which were doing quite a good job of blocking an overlooking tower block, but to improve things further we wanted to create more height in this area of the garden.

In order to do this we added in five more Crataegus persimilis 'Prunifolia Splendens'. We added these in a zig-zag formation to create a more natural shape within the garden. In our initial conversation with Rita she was very clear that she didn't want to see any bare soil in her garden, she wanted it to feel full and luscious, so this is something that we really focused on in our design work.

We agreed with Rita to try and keep the carbon footprint of the garden as low as possible, so we are using only reclaimed stone for the hard standing areas and we are securing them in the ground without using concrete.

Rita's house

Rita's house and garden has a North/South aspect which I have marked on our site drawing, along with the scale which is 1 to 50 on A3. Walking through her garden takes you to the main entryway to her house and also to her new studio.

When we discussed the brief, Rita told us that she wanted enough hard standing so that she could have a good seating area, which included pouffes for her dogs, as well as seating for the humans.

The longest vista in the garden is the view from Rita's studio, so it was really important for us to create a beautiful view for Rita to look out onto as she sits at her desk. At the end of this walkway we will put Rita's beautiful antique table and chairs, and behind these will be a new garden shed for Rita to keep all of her garden tools.

We kept Rita's original Acer, which we protected throughout the build process. Below the existing trees and the Crataegus persimilis 'Prunifolia Splendens' that we planted, Rita asked us to create a solid evergreen screen from her trellis to ground level. This would create more privacy along the northern boundary, so in order to achieve this we planted Camellia sasanqua 'Cleopatra', which is one of the early flowering Camellias, which flower from December to February.

In front of the camellias, we've planted some clipped carpinus and yew shapes to create some big, bold structure within the garden. Below this we then added in some pink flowering hydrangeas and shrub roses and below these, some shade-loving perennials.

If you're looking for planting inspiration, then Pinterest is a great place to discover new plants and gather together images of the sort of plants and colourways that you like.

The plans for Rita Konig's garden can be found here.