Three Level Garden
This was a tough assignment! The garden was quite small, but on three levels. The problem areas were—the existing patio area, which was tiny and poorly constructed;
The other two levels were grassed, which the client didn’t want as it was a maintenance headache;
And the steps between the levels were an accident waiting to happen;
The one thing the garden did have going for it were the amazing rocks embedded in the slope, which we wanted to re-use as a feature in the new garden.
We extended the area nearest the house so you could use it to sit out on;
And, as you can see, we put in proper retaining walls on all levels, plus some nice wide and even steps which meant you could move safely from one level to the next!
The middle level became a leaf shaped, larger sitting out area, with beds on either side;
Note also that we moved the lower flight of steps so that you walk out of the door and straight up the steps to the main patio area.
The upper level was gravelled for ease of maintenance;
And those wonderful rocks were reused to create a feature rockery on the middle level, nicely visible from the big back window of the house;
The finishing touch was the planting, which we carried out once the landscaping was all done, using shade lovers on the top level with pyracanths climbing up the new fence;
On the middle level, one bed is designed to have feathery planting, and the client provided the perfect pot as a focal point;
And on the other side, we used predominantly silver planting to provide light and to complement the paving;
The feature rocks were planted with ferns;
The bottom level planting was kept very simple, with Christmas box and cyclamen surrounding the client’s own bottle brush tree, which did a great job of distracting your eye from the neighbour’s fence!
