It’s always nice to be approached by professionals with an eye for design and quality, so when a couple of Reigate architects contacted me to create a family garden design in Reigate, I was only too pleased. The couple had a young child and had recently transformed their detached house, which revealed the weakness of their existing garden. This was a perfect opportunity for me to help transform the rear garden in keeping with the tasteful work they had done to the house.
With one of the clients hailing from Sweden we decided to integrate familiar elements of Swedish gardens into this one. Sweden has a lot of birch trees and a lot of granite, so I selected these as key hallmarks of the design, and combined them with a semi-naturalistic planting pallette. I used silver grey granite paving as a tough and natural solution, and the plank format gives a modern twist. The design was planned in two phases so that a children’s play area could in the future be converted to a snug firepit area. This is a good strategy in a family garden design – it’s always important to plan how the garden will be used when children grow up.
