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Sally Court, APLD
East Twickenham, Middlesex, United Kingdom
Featured Member, APLD Website, January 2008
How to integrate a new terrace and border into an established suburban garden
Michael, my client, is the chairman of the Historic Roses Society in England. His garden is a temple to these scented, thorny plants. His house and garden face due south and he needed rescuing when he built a conservatory on to the rear of his Victorian house. The cottage garden bounding the house had been destroyed but a timber pergola over which several fabulous climbers scrambled and continued to flower against all odds, remained looking very out of place. The challenge was to link the remainder of the garden on the far side of the pergola to the new extension. This structure proved to be the pivotal feature. A perpetually sunny terrace was constructed in front of the new conservatory. The pergola acted as the back drop to the new “contemporary” palette of plants. A “dry stream” detail meanders across the stone terrace leading from the back door down to a bridge across a rill constructed under the full length of the pergola and into the rest of the garden. 
A wonderfully cool and shady area, the rill feeds a koi pond which is covered by a decorative wrought iron grille which not only protects the fish from the visiting herons but also from young visitors who are constantly intrigued by the wild life in the pool. A scree border filled with Mediterranean drought loving plants are allowed to self seed amongst the stones and three dramatic slender Italian cypress provide structure to the new border as well as shelter for the sculpture of a sleeping retriever placed over the grave of the owner’s dog who died during construction. This border requires little maintenance and no water which is essential for the busy life-style led by Michael and his partner and for the water restrictions which are frequently applied during the summer months. The garden is opened for charity twice a year and always generates great interest and enquiries into “how to garden without water”.
An unrelated L-shaped town garden
The two disparate arms of the garden were reached by a steep set of narrow steps leading down from the conservatory which lead straight towards the neighbours backdoor. 
My brief was to bring the two sides of the garden together. The steps were a trip hazard and the long walk alongside the rear wall of the integral garage was never used as it was a dank drear corridor. By opening this area up, rebuilding the retaining wall and creating an entrance up from the parking lot I was able to create a “Japanese style” walk with moss garden and flowering cherries. This walk lead up to a tiered set of deck steps that opened out as a terrace onto the other arm of the L. The steps were shallow and accessible from three sides. The Conservatory also became a useable space as you could step out onto a deep step leading away from the neighbour’s back door. Lighting and water also link the two distinctive areas of the garden.
A Grade I Listed House and Garden in London
The main obstacle here was the Listing of the property and its boundary walls. Any work to be carried out had to be approved by the local planning office and the conservation officer. The property 250 years old is in need of much restoration and the boundary walls which fell into my remit needed repairing a raising by 18” to provide privacy from a busy and noisy public house on the other side of the wall. 
The wall was already higher than the allowed tolerance 6’ which would mean a very good argument on my part. After meetings with the council officers, the conservation officer agreed that she was not in favour of any house extensions or garden work to be a pastiche of the original house – apart from the wall. There were two trees in the garden, both of which had grown well beyond a suitable size for a small London garden. One was a fig, the other a bay laurel. Neither tree had a tree preservation order as one was a fruit tree and the other not indigenous. Unfortunately as the property was within a conservation area, permission had to be sought to either remove or reduce the trees in size. Neither tree was of particular importance or beauty. Nevertheless the tree officer refused permission for their removal and only allowed them to be reduced by a third and threatened to place tpo’s on both! We were given permission to raise the wall and this has been carried out using reclaimed bricks, lime mortar and a soot wash. The garden is mimimalist with clean lines and a large stone terrace for entertaining. A stone waterfall covers much of the noise from the noisy pub and the rill and pools provide a link from the waterfall sited under the offending fig and the house. A new contemporary dining extension of steel and glass is being constructed from the house and a complementary summerhouse of steel and glass will be built at the same time. This will be placed adjacent to the bay laurel. These two extensions were part of the garden design remit.
The beautifying of an industrial unit on the outskirts of London
The brief was to create a garden for the staff to enjoy from either being the in the garden or from viewing it from their offices. The corner site was continuously vandalised and fly-tipping happened on a daily basis. The directors having talked to me about the problem decided to try an experiment: by improving the site and creating a garden which was cared for the vandals would go elsewhere! Three years on it is a proven success. The first year, we lost a few plants as they were up-rooted but by year two the garden was becoming more established and this year, the project has won awards! The staff regularly sits out in the garden to enjoy their breaks. It was low budget, the whole transformation cost £25,000 and my team carries out regular maintenance.
An 11 acre garden created from disused fields of an old farmstead
After applying for change of use from agricultural use to domestic garden and this being granted I was able to start designing a relatively flat site of made up ground into a series of rooms that surround the new build house. The land is heavy clay, relatively neutral soil and in areas water-logged but otherwise fertile. 
The first challenge was to work out a way in which to drain the water that ran off the neighbouring hills on to and out of the site in a creative way conserving as much water as possible. A small livestock watering pond was enlarged into a small lake which doubles as a swimming pond. The water spill off from the hills is channelled via a series of French drains into a “feed” stream that runs directly into the clay puddled pond. The overflow from the pond flows through a pipe that opens up into a rill that runs the length of the “sunken garden” which in turn runs off into a series of small lily ponds and water storage tanks off which the irrigation system runs. The overflow from the tanks runs directly into a small river that runs along the boundary of the property. No chemicals are allowed to be used in this garden as we do not want to contaminate the natural water courses. The swimming pond is cleaned naturally by a reed filtration system. The children and their friends have all been taught about playing safely around water and all swim happily amongst the lilies, native iris, reeds and with the fish and newts.
The main problems encountered on this project apart from the drainage, were caused by the inherited made up ground. Shoring up banks and preventing soil erosion until the plants were sufficiently established and the root system took over this role was a bit of a nightmare as the only cost effective material available at the time was plastic webbing which, of course, is not environmentally friendly and has to be disposed of carefully. The other problem was educating a client into using plants that would thrive in conditions that did not require the importation of 100s of cubic yards of topsoil rather than the traditional garden plants for which they had a hankering. The mix of hardy herbaceous plants, grasses and wild flowers has created superb areas of “native planting” which require minimal maintenance. Those areas where “cottage” gardens have been created have been kept to a minimum near the house are regularly topped up with organic composts. Old fields have been seeded with wild flower mixes and paths are mown through the meadows during the late spring and summer.
45 acres of steeply sloping acid clay slopes in Sussex
A neglected 16th Century farm house and lands overgrown by 60’ conifers, rampant bamboos in the wetlands and woodlands that had not been cared for since the 1950s. An old stone terrace in poor repair and a retaining wall were all that were worth rescuing on the site and from these two features the new garden emerged. Permission for felling hundreds of unwanted trees was granted from the local planning office and the Fire Brigade informed that large fires to get rid of the old roots would be burning throughout the winter months. The whole estate was water-logged with natural springs bubbling up where ever and when ever you excavated a hole. New streams and drainage systems were installed which feed a series of ponds through out the length of the garden. Large water storage tanks were provided to supply an irrigation system for borders set on a steep south facing hillside. The challenge was to create a garden from – nothing. To find a form and context linking the small natural stone farmhouse to the greater landscape. To establish a series of gardens each with a different character yet would relate one to another and the Blackdown Hills in the distance. 
The house held the answer, a typical English timbered house, nestling in an old stone wall with the view stretching out to front. The gardens nearest the house set on two terraces were planted with a modern interpretation of cottage garden plants with vistas looking out over the hills. Pergolas, secret gardens, large borders all created walks and hidden places that lead out from these terraces and the further down the hill you walked, the more naturalistic the planting becomes with a wild flower meadow meeting the five giant grass borders to the woodland beyond. Reclaimed stone was used for the house terrace, one of only two areas in which there is a hard landscaping surface. All other terraces, walks, paths are created from natural materials that allow for the water to penetrate the soil and drain away naturally. The 3 largest of the 6 ponds have been created from puddled clay. The newest of the three, set in a clearing in the woodland, is being established as a natural swimming pond. The gardeners use organic methods to control weed growth, pests and diseases. All the vegetative waste is composted and re-used within the gardens and felled trees are chipped and this waste is used to dress the many paths leading through the woodlands. The gardens have taken 14 years to create and are now open regularly on the National Gardens Scheme and for concerts and operas.
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