Creating Elegant Gardens
07879 076663
07879 076663
Hidden in the lee of Edinburgh’s famous Royal Botanic Gardens, and behind a traditional three storey town house, it was a joy to create this timeless design for a knowledgeable gardener and her rather classy cats. The materials were chosen to make the garden look as though it has always been here. All the old Caithness pavers dug up on site were re-cut and integrated into the design, and we carefully chose Fairstone ethically sourced paving to blend in with this. We wanted to give a slightly more contemporary twist to the social terrace, with a bespoke fire pit and pizza oven and a ‘Cor-ten’ rust-effect water tank and rill creating a relaxed but sophisticated space for entertaining. Everything is knitted together by abundant planting in a harmonious palette of blue, pink and white with lots of green.
A particular requirement was for a design to look great when viewed from the upper floor sitting room and this works beautifully, with professional garden lighting and the stone firepit adding another dimension to the design after dark.
This garden was a pretty blank canvas although the summer house was already in place before the design and needed to be integrated. Many plants were potted up and saved and the Acer moved to a new position. The trees in the adjacent Botanic Gardens are a huge asset and the design seeks to nestle the garden into this sheltering ‘borrowed’ landscape. There were some strange level changes and slopes in the garden and careful planning allowed earth to be redistributed to create new level lawns. The most challenging aspect of the build was that everything had to be brought through the house as there is no other garden access. This meant no digger on site and lots of man-handling of bulk heavy materials and plants through the house, including down a flight of steps. The stone balls proved a particular challenge, as ever met with resolve and ingenuity by the wonderful landscapers at Greenlands Gardens, who built a sort of giant marble run with old tyres to roll these very heavy balls down the stairs!
