Red and yellow and orange and black and grey and green contemporary garden
Here we have the garden as it is being built – you can see the paths going in
Hideous concrete wall 40 M long to be masked by espalier fruit trees
This is a very large and unusual garden. It has a 40 metre long concrete wall separating it from a school behind. The shape of the garden is triangular and our remit was to design it in such a way that the wall was either disguised or masked with planting and the strange shape was made less obvious. Our client was looking for: a formal area close to the house with patio and raised beds for easy gardening, a rougher lawn for children to play on, and a wild flower garden at the very end with a small orchard and wild looking shrubs (easy!) They wanted paths interconnecting all the areas so that their elderly parents could also enjoy the garden. They also wanted a gravel garden with herbs, a shade garden with ferns, and some raised vegetable beds held in with black railway sleepers. The style is contemporary but with a touch of classical and with rather bright coloured planting… a difficult mix to design.
The fences were in reasonable condition but looked pretty terrible so we painted them black. This worked well because our client wanted a black/grey look for the raised beds and patio. We planted espalier trees the whole way along the back wall and climbers along the black fencing. We planted fruit trees in the orchard and olive trees in the gravel garden. The planting is predominately red, orange and yellow and here are some of the plants!
Trees
Espalier fruit trees
Acer Palmatum
Amelanchier lamarkii
Fruit bearing trees – malus and pyrus
Olive trees (Olea Europaea) standard – loose head
Climbers
Vitis coignetiae
Lonicera periclymenum ‘Serotina’ or ‘Belgica’
Clematis Montana
Trachelospermum jasminoides
Rosa ‘Etolie de Hollande’
Rosa ‘Teasing Gloria’
Shrubs
Photinia x fraseri ‘Red Robin’
Arbutus unedo
Cornus alba ‘Sibirica’
Cornus sericea ‘Flaviramea’
Cornus ‘Elegantissima’
Hydrangea arborescens’Annabelle’
Viburnum plicatum ‘Mariesii’
Osmanthus burkwoodii
Daphne odora aureomarginata
Choisya ‘Aztec Pearl’
Philadelphus ‘Manteau d’Hermine’
Escallonia rubra ‘Crimson Spire’
Abelia ‘Edward Goucher’
Spiraea x cinerea ‘Grefsheim
Chaenomeles superba ‘Crimson and Gold’
Potentilla ‘Red Ace’
Perennials
Crocosima ‘Lucifer’
Hakonechloa macra
Hellenium ‘Moerheim Beauty’
Hemerocallis ‘Stafford’ or ‘Gentle Shepherd’,
Heuchera ‘Marmalade’
Kniphofia ‘Ember Glow’
Penstemon pinifolius
Persicaria amplexicaulia ‘Firetail’
Rudbeckia fulgida ‘Goldsturm’
Verbascum ‘Firedance’
Grasses and ferns and ‘others’
Pennisetum alopecuroides ‘Hameln’
Athyrium filix –fenina
Dryopteris affinia
Polystichum setiferum
Others |(random section, herbs etc)
Allium ‘Cristophii’
Anenome ‘St Honorine Jobert’
Helleborus foetidus–nigra
Liriope muscari
Erigeron karvinskianus
Origanum vulgare
Soleirolia soleirolii
Thymus vulgaris
Ground cover
Epimedium x perralchicum ‘Frohnleiten’
Lamium maculatum ‘Beacon Silver’
Pachysandra terminalis ‘Green Sheen’
