When people buy a house, sometimes even if it's brand new, they like to make their mark by stamping their style on it.
In most cases it's superficial; maybe just a lick of paint, new curtains or the addition of double glazing. Some people buy a house that still has potential to be enlarged and improved with the addition of extensions or maybe a conservatory.
Before the recession, developers would buy up under-developed properties and turn them around quickly for profit: those heady days are now all but gone, although the right property in the right place will still retain this potential.
However there are very few people who seem to understand that by adding a garden there's room to increase a properties value too. Although having said that, every property and gardens' potential must be assessed individually before making a decision to invest with a view to sell on for a profit in a short time frame.
The rule of thumb is considered to be 5-10% of a property's current value to spend on garden development. Obviously if the property itself is going to be developed and expanded considerably then one must take a view on the budget based on the house's value when it's completely finished.
I once had my house, garden and office space Feng Shui'd. I'd often heard about Feng Shui and how people base their life around it and I wanted to explore the possibility of incorporating this practise into all of our new garden designs.
In the end I never really did understand Feng Shui and the idea lapsed. However, I do quite quickly get a feel for a garden when I first walk in. Whether it's an existing landscape or something that's still a raw canvas.
I'm sure I'm not alone and we all see and feel (even smell) an environment in different ways.
I look and feel for flow lines (whether that's tangible or imagined) airflow, horizon, space, desire lines, aspect, height (in relation to a dwelling), slopes (and their direction in respect of a dwelling) and water (and others if they hit me on first inspection).
Designing a garden for a short time span
Putting aside designing and building a garden for financial gain, has anyone ever designed and/or built a garden with a view that it is likely to be replaced or changed within a certain time-frame, say 3-5 years?
Any gardener will know that once a hard feature is built: say a patio, garden walls or a pond, for example, any planting is likely to take 2-5 years to take on any kind of maturity. It's the longer term that most designers and gardeners are anticipating so it's not often in the plan to schedule a complete or partial garden re-rebuildt so soon. If we are honest most of us who build and design gardens will be thinking that once finished, a new garden will become a permanent fixture.
I'm sure most of us have ripped out or replanted beds and borders in short time-scales but ripping out the whole fabric of a garden is a life changing event. The majority of us get emotionally attached and I'm sure we all have that favourite spot where all of our troubles are lost for a brief moment?
Have you ever been asked to design a garden for a client that you know, regardless of how the garden evolves, will be completely re-designed in the future?
Do you have clients that change gardens on a regular basis or who maybe tire of a scheme and re-think their plan?
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When you talk of flow lines it reminds me of 'visual lines of force' championed by the Landscape Architect Simon Bell when designing woodland - http://www.valbro.uni-freiburg.de/pdf/pres_bell.pdf techniques we had to adapt to (and rightly) in forestry since the 1990's.
As regards the permanence of a garden design, I find it difficult to see how a designer could justify any kind of temporary garden - it is impossible to predict future trends and fashion is the antithesis of sustainable; but we really wouldn't want to be stuck with the gardens of the 60s either, landscape does evolve as does land use requirements!
I am bouyed up some of the designs, as seen on here, which could clearly be timeless (the rammed earth stuff in particular) and thus be the heritage of the future, maybe?
With the trend, in recent years for some to use Herbaceous as a garden structure is not correct. Whilst the flowers on Herbacous may substitute Shrubs and Trees, they are and always will be a temporary fix.
Traditionally and historically the mix was 70% evergreen Shrubs and 30% decicuous, with Herbaceous infill. Hey we do not do tradition!!!
Using just Herbaceous will only result in a garden looking great in the Summer, and looks like a pile of dead sticks for the rest of the year.
THe RHS spec, is that Herbaceous should be re-planted/replaced every 3-7 years.
Herbaceous is not Garden Design but is a planted bed, with no structure, year round.
Garden Design is a year round garden, with interest 12 months of the year, every year. Tina when she ran her own Garden Design business, ran on the principle of, having something of interest, every week of the year.
Herbaceous is just the lazy option to Garden Design.
There is only one client that comes to mind when you mention a short term design, a client with more money than sense. About 4 years ago a client approached me asking, "can you design a garden that will last me 4-5 years" respectivly i said yes but i asked why only 4-5 years, he replied "to put it simply, i get bored" and again on cue this year, the client asked me to start thinking about another design, i might say its not about removing the bones of the garden, its usually about chainging the theme of the design but incorporating as much of the exsisting features as possible. So it just goes to show 99% of garden designers would agree on building a garden to last the distance, but in certain cases this is not always the case.
I agree with many ... long term . I , as many will work to a brief specific to that specific client , also working with the existing site, property and lanscape beyond. I dont work with trends or fashion I aim for a timeless approach, a space which will grow, evolve and mature. Whether a clipped and sculpted space or a more natural space or a combination. Maintenance is always a consideration , both on a living matter level: plants/trees/clipping/shaping etc and on a hardlandscaping level. And as our climate changes and flutuates plants which may have been more hardy ( known as ) are not, so there may always need to be change at some point when not expected . Yet the joy of gardens is that they do evolve , so even with a timeless, long term, garden, not a`fashion ` based space, there can always be `artistic freedom, to add here or there. Just like one can add to a canvas.
When one looks at some of the classical, topiary gardens and older, what may be called traditional gardens they are fabulous 15/20/30 years on . Of course new owners will always want to make their mark or be redeveloping, so there will never be one way.
As above I have had a number of clients who like change, like to experiment, there will always be diversity in approach depending on each individual project.
I thought you might be interested in this.
We built the walled garden above (completed in 1991). The very last task we did was to plant about seventy root-balled yew trees. The idea was to create a maze.
The plants cost over £4,000 + VAT and of course we had labour on top. My client didn't complete the maze at the time due to the cost. I assumed the second half would be planted at a later date.
However this screen shot from Google maps reveals that all of the yew trees have been removed.
Although not intended, the maze was indeed part of a temporary landscape.
£4000 + vat lets hope they sold them on. http://limehurst.co.uk/v2/