Asian influenced courtyard garden with lap pool
BRIEF
Our client chose us to design their garden because they had been inspired by our Mindfulness garden and wanted us to create an Asian influenced courtyard garden that would evoke a similar meditative atmosphere and feature a focal point that would be seen all year round from the house.
The property included a central courtyard which was viewed from 3 sides within the house and therefore needed to look good all year round. The existing courtyard was fairly featureless including artificial grass that heated up in the sun and was generally uninviting.
In the main garden we are also asked to incorporate a lap pool and hot tub and reshape the garden to take account of some internal changes that were being made to the house. The style of the main garden was to be quite different to the Asian influenced courtyard as this was to be more of a play and entertaining area for the family to hang out and to entertain guests.
DESIGN SOLUTION
The central courtyard was designed to have a ‘wow factor’ so that the owners would feel both inspired by the views of the garden from the house and feel invited into the space to sit, relax and meditate. Some of the wooden cladding was replaced by ‘green wall’ and lush planting was added to planting beds that were slightly sunken and incorporated stepping stones that appeared to ‘float’ above the planting. This created interest and included a feeling of being more ‘immersed’ by plants without taking up too much of the limited ground area. The stepping stones allowed you to open the bifold doors and step through some of the planting and create a connection between the inside and outside spaces. A feature wall combined a water wall within the green wall, with the water running into a larger pool through which a tree appeared to grow. (The pool was constructed above the tree root ball). Laser cut screens with an Asian pattern were used to divide the space, create depth as well as obscure a door that led to the car parking area. In the main garden sweeping curves were used to create a more relaxed, organic feeling and as a counterpoint to the long straight drive that runs down one side of the garden. To distract from the view of the drive a series of curved hedges were used that also created an intriguing journey down the garden which culminated at a swing seat. This was built of a frame that allowed it to double up as football posts when they wanted to play games with the children. The swing seat, statue and bench seating were used as focal points from the raised dining area and the new terrace designed around the lap pool. Near the house and dining area the planting included more Mediterranean plants which merged into a more cottage garden style planting scheme as you moved down the garden. Animated visualisation of this garden design: This garden design Berkshire is in construction and we are looking forward to seeing it completed soon.
