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The 'Wow' Garden

This was a reconsideration of design and function following a near doubling in size of the garden, a project completed as part of the Planting Design Diploma at London College of Garden Design.

Since the garden was to be used often for entertaining, the big idea underpinning the design was to create a ‘wow’ factor for when guests came round.  My intention: to create something quite stunning visually and hopefully even a bit jaw-dropping.

 

The desert-scape notion was adopted because the planting will essentially be at eye level or slightly higher from a sitting down perspective as the lounge area is sunken within the garden topography, which makes it almost like a skyline.  I thought of the impressive skylines of London and Manhattan and that it would be fun to try and recreate those kind of shapes with plants. 

 

 

Exotic plants seemed to lend themselves to the 'Wow' theme well since they often have an architectural quality.  Not all exotic plants are hardy enough to survive UK temperatures so these are supplemented with other plants that shared architectural attributes.  In particular, the cacti that I would have liked to represent the skyscrapers I substituted with the columnic Berberis thunbergii ‘Helmond’s Pillar’.

The images included here chart the design process of a new project: Initial idea development and selection, plant palette built and refined for suitability to site, planning of specific plant location and juxtaposition and a sketch/ visual representation of how we might expect the area to look once completed and grown in.

Incorporated is a planting plan drawn to scale.  We regularly provide planting plans upon request for garden design clients in North London.

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