Garden Designers & Landscape Gardeners
Garden Buildings in South & East England

The Hot Walled Garden.
Without the deep warm glow of the back wall in this garden the whole space would have a different characte. Such was the intensity of this red, it set off all the greens of the foliage and wiped out the effect of the grey, black and white inner London city location. The back of this house faces north which is our favorite oreintation for a garden. We can use ferns and palms in the shade close to the back of the house and because the light and warmth is at the back of the garden you are drawn to the farthest point from the house, using all of the space available. The city micro climate meant that we could plant a lemon tree in the ground and use a palm from korea - Arenga engleri with the long feather shaped leaves just behind the low fern in the foreground of this photo.   

We discuss the merits of different colours with our clients at the design stage to understand their preferences in general terms - whether to use a strong colour or an earthy terracotta/ochre tone, which shades or combinations of colours. Colour is such a subjective, personal choice that we make some recommendations but let our clients choose several different colours from a professional dulux colour swatch book. Then once the site is ready, in this case after we had rendered the old brick wall, we paint small patches from sample tins onto the wall or feature in situ. This is important because different daylight or nightime lighting conditions can make colours look very different at different times of day and in different wheather. We recommend living with the samples for a few days because of this. We envisaged a paprika shade at the begining of our colour trials in this garden and after many trials all agreed on a colour that was coincidentally called - Hot Paprika. 

Top left - we used our staggered courses patio design to introduce strong curving shapes into the foreground of the views from the house, imeadiately outside the patio doors. You can see more examples of our patio designs on the patios page of our portfolio section. 90% of the plants in this photo are evergreen so that our clients have a lush view from their kitchen/dining room (the most used room in the house) during the winter when it is most needed to counteract the barren cityscape.
Right - the curves of the patio set off the tragectory of the stepping stone path which leads through planting that will mature to be dense and full of colour and scent, with tall golden stemmed bamboo Phyllostachys vivax 'Aureocaulis' on each side near the boundaries.
Below left - our Moroccan style bench in Sapele hardwood makes it possible to wander to the back of the garden and sit at any time in the sunniest part of the graden. You can read more about this bench and see our other designs for permanent seating in our furniture section. 

left - this photo was taken just after completion of phase 1 of this design's construction. A sunken hot tub will be added in the foreground of this photo where the open gravel space is. It will have a platform surround to match our Sapele hardwood deck and bench with a low terracotta wall incorporating a built in Chimenea.
Right - the view from the patio. Notice how the sun fires up the Hot Paprika wall.