Tuesday, 16 April 2013

From blank paper to finished design


The inspiration
The theme for the garden is inspired by the title of the awareness campaign run by Alzheimer’s Society entitled ‘Remember to Reflect.’

Designed as a space for quiet reflection; somewhere to reminisce and seek inspiration and pleasure in the simple joys of nature. Carers of people with dementia like to carry on doing things together as a couple for as long as possible as the illness progresses; this garden gives an ideal social activity that can be enjoyed together.

A design emerges
So I have the inspiration, but what will the garden actually look like? To start things off I draw a square 9x9m in size (to scale, not full size, of course!) and break down the resulting ‘garden’ into one metre squares to form a grid. I designed a garden last year for a client that was a series of overlapping squares and by applying this technique the geometry of the garden slowly emerges.

‘The overlapping squares divide the space into three distinct areas of paving, water and planting'


The seating area is the largest ‘square’ of paving, around which an L-shaped raised bed will be built. Its often hard to successfully photograph a show garden as there are lots of distractions in the background. I’ve tried to reduce this problem by building up the raised bed at the back into full height walls to screen and frame the garden.

To get to the seating area you cross over the reflective pool via a series of large stepping stones. And finally, the resulting voids between paving and water become the spaces for the third and most important element of the garden; the planting. Planted at waist height in the raised bed, the plants will create a sense of enclosure around the seating area, then at ground level to all other sides. Views into the garden will be through and over the planting.

‘Overall the garden is split approximately one third planting, one third water and one third paving.’


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