Last week I made a visit to a garden in the grounds of a beautiful historic building in Hampshire, where I have designed a new courtyard for long-standing clients. My clients moved to this house in the last couple of years, and most of the garden was already established, and little design input was needed.
On my visit, I was delighted to see how effective a simple 'tweak' that I advised on has been. Roses and mixed herbaceous plants within an existing box edged parterre on the lawn have been removed and replaced with a simple golden gravel mulch under clipped box cones. Previously the planting had been a bit of a headache: sometimes colourful but often rather untidy, and on one side of the garden it was struggling a little due to the shade of a nearby huge Beech tree. Now it looks crisp and formal, and complements the historic building perfectly. The pale gravel is a lovely foil to the green box foliage, and it seems to glow, even in the shade of the Beech.
A wide herbaceous border on the sunny side of the garden fulfills the need for more varied, seasonal planting, and it wasn't necessary to try to replicate that effect in the box parterre. Sometimes, simplicity really is the best design response, and that is something I will be reminding myself whenever I design, and will try to pass on to my students at the University.
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