A View Of The Recently Completed Front Garden Looking From The Road
The Concept Design For The Front Garden / Drive.
The Existing Garden Prior To It's Transformation.
The Client owned a high-end kitchen design/manufacturing company and had recently down-sized to this smaller house and was struggling to park two cars on the existing tarmac driveway and still be able to access them/easily pass by without standing on the grass.
The plan was therefore to, in effect, widen the driveway by providing "stepping stones" that the couple could stand on in all-weathers. These were laid in a grid pattern at the Client's request as they had seen similar front gardens done in Australia when visiting relatives and liked the look.
The couple's rear garden had already been landscaped in a contemporary manner by a builder (who built them a modern extension with bi-fold doors) and they had planted this up themselves using "architectural plants" such as box hedging, bamboos and palms etc. The initial idea was to replicate this look frontways but the Client changed their mind slightly in favour of less exotic looking plants but ones still with interesting forms etc.
Raised timber planters were constructed using new, chunky, treated softwood "railway sleepers" and these were stained black using a specialist "barn paint".
A relatively cheap white gravel was used to mulch most of the area as this was the gravel used predominantly on the rest of the housing development and was easily sourced locally.
All planted areas were top-dressed with a layer of contrasting "river cobbles" and two bands of red colored block paving were installed to compliment two similar brick bands on the property and to help tie the two together.