Twickenham Garden Design
Contemporary Garden
The clients are a young professional couple who had just finished major renovation work on their house in Twickenham and were in need of a designer to create a garden that would compliment the strong architecture of the house. The modern, formal design was to encompass a large entertaining space, lawn, seating areas, low maintenance planting and a hidden shed.
The only feature retained as part of the overall design, was a Lilac tree positioned towards the back of the garden. This became a key focal point, around which the strong geometry of the design was formed. A priority was to improve the view of a large imposing building at the end of the garden, this was overcome by rendering the wall and painting it a soft greyish purple that would highlight the Lilac tree and recede into the garden.
Photos by Marianne Majerus
The boundary walls are a mix of rendered blocks painted off white (to reduce glare) and horizontal slatted Balau hardwood trellis that creates beautiful patterns on the sawn York stone. Garden seating is provided with 3 permanently positioned rendered benches, capped with hardwood timber that are offset, drawing the eye in a zig zag down the length of the garden, with an additional cantilevered stone bench tucked into the corner. Two additional trees are carefully positioned to further emphasize this movement, a Prunus 'Kanzan' and Amelanchier Lamarckii, the latter providing much needed shade on the deck. The entertaining space is a large area of hardwood deck, with Scottish cobbles providing a neat detail and hiding many of the lighting and irrigation cables.
Throughout this delightful Twickenham garden, the colours used are very much a reflection of the interior, a soft palette of purple, magenta and buff grey. This was particularly emphasized in the planting of deep purple Heuchera, Phormium 'Sundowner', Penstemon 'Sour Grapes' and Verbena bonariensis to name a few,
with the emphasis on white and cream planting against the rear purple wall.
