THE LANDSCAPING SOLUTIONS BLOG
Welcome to our Blog. Inspiration, updates and industry trends from the team at Landscaping Solutions.
AN AWARD-WINNING GARDEN DESIGN ENHANCES YOUR HOME
The design by Cassandra Crouch meant that the garden and house felt right together.
At Landscaping Solutions we work with some of the leading garden designers in the UK. We regard our role as providing a safe pair of hands when it comes to delivering the design, taking worry off the shoulders of both garden designer and householder. This is exactly what we did for Cassandra Crouch with this beautiful space on the edge of Richmond Park, South West London.
BALI award-winning garden, in South West London, designed by Cassandra Crouch.
Typical of family gardens, this one had a wide-ranging brief. It needed areas for:
- adult exercise and children’s play
- entertaining and outdoor cooking, during the day and after dark
- for rest and relaxation
- for storage
And while the clients were not particularly keen on gardening, they did want a variety of heights and textures in the planting to create year-round interest.
The house has a rectilinear, minimalist feel, and Cassandra’s design gives it a strong sense of place with the use and overlap of strong squares and rectangles in the design - even the trampoline is square. Cassandra’s Crouch’s design marries the garden to the building, creating a relaxing space that feels right at home.
Beams made by Leighton Ironcraft support a hanging seat that offers a contrasting shape to the lines and rectangles.
Generous beams support the hanging seat; grassed and paved areas have straight edges and ninety-degree angles on their corners; the fireplace feature and barbecue are strongly rectangular.
A design like this needs a highly accurate finish - imperfections in angles and straight lines are immediately visible. At the same time, the variety of materials requires skill and experience to integrate them seamlessly, as well as very careful attention to detail to ensure that levels match and surfaces move smoothly from one texture to another.
We pride ourselves at Landscaping Solutions on creating a luxury finish. “They are passionate about construction,” says Cassandra, “and strive to achieve very high standards.”
Sawn Grey Yorkstone and Smoked Oak Millboard combine textures in this garden designed by Cassandra Crouch in South West London.
High-quality materials completed the sense of luxury. The patio uses Sawn Grey Yorkstone (supplied by London Stone) which tones beautifully with Millboard’s Enhanced Grain Smoked Oak composite decking, laid at the access to the house and around the gym/studio, while adding contrasting texture.
This was a garden design that required a wide range of landscaping skills. As well as laying different materials and recycling existing paving to allow access to a storage area hidden behind the gym, we installed textured tile cladding and stainless steel beading to the fireplace, put in the barbecue and then rendered and painted its housing to tone with the overall colour scheme. Light-coloured aggregate around paving stones was retained in a stabilising system to prevent gravel migrating to beds and paving and to make a stable surface to walk on.
Round box balls, uplit at night, add contrasting shape and texture in a garden which the owners wanted to be easy to look after.
Lighting, which picks out shape and texture at night and focuses on the barbecue and seating area for extended evening use, was installed by Electrosafe Landscape Lighting Ltd, overseen by us at Landscaping Solutions. The drip-irrigation system, which we installed, will reduce work in the garden and ensure the survival of plants while the home-owner is on holiday.
Badgers!
So far, so normal for our teams at Landscaping Solutions. However, this build introduced an interesting additional element - badgers in a neighbouring garden.
Badgers are protected by law, as are their setts, and if works needs to be done in their vicinity, a licence is required from Natural England.
Landscaping Solutions happily shouldered the responsibility of ensuring everything was done as it should be. Natural England required the installation of night cameras to monitor sett entrances for two weeks. With no badger activity recorded, work could progress.
“I was really pleased to have had the challenge,” says Landscaping Solutions’ Ben West. “It means we learned best practice for the situation and allowed me to get up close and personal with one of my favourite British mammals. I’ve been badger-watching since I was a young lad so it was second nature for me to want to do the best by the badgers.”
Textured tiles clad the outdoor fireplace with stainless steel beading to finish the edges.
In the meantime we shifted our schedule to make progress in other areas of the garden, away from the badger area. Good communication with garden designer Cassandra Crouch and the homeowners meant we could be flexible in our approach and work out an efficient reorganisation of the sequence of jobs required.
We completed the build in a couple of months, in June 2016. It went on to win us our fourth BALI award, and our second Principal Award, this time in the category of Domestic Garden Construction (£60K-£100K).
“The team are professional and pleasant to work with,” said Cassandra. “Both the client and myself are extremely happy with the result. I would not hesitate to recommend them to clients in the future.”
See our other award-winning gardens.
Contact Ben West to find out how we can help you create a luxury garden to the highest standards for your clients. If you’re a home-owner looking to enhance your living space, we can refer you to talented garden designers. Just get in touch to discuss.
LANDSCAPING SOLUTIONS BUILDS WOW FACTOR INTO AWARD-WINNING GARDEN DESIGN
Indoor/outdoor living. Once something of a novel idea in the UK, it’s now a staple ingredient of garden design and, as garden landscapers, we get huge satisfaction in a clients’ delight at their new connection with the outdoors when a design is complete.
Crisp lines characterise this stunning garden design in South West London.
Often bi-fold doors opening onto decking is all that a client asks for, especially in the small gardens you find in urban Surrey and London. So much more can be done, however, and we were thrilled to be involved in this stunning BALI-award winning build in South London, a garden that offers multiple opportunities to enjoy the outdoors throughout the year, and which provides real-life inspiration.
The garden design brief
The brief was very clear - a space for entertaining and which would provide entertainment. A strong geometrical design was important, with all-the-year-round interest provided by structural, symmetrical planting. “With our large glass doors at the back of the house, we felt that it needed to feel like a natural open continuation of the kitchen/dining room, with similar smooth floor tiles and at the same level,” said the client.
The client wanted a garden that they could walk straight out into on the same level in bare feet.
They wanted a contemporary space suitable for relaxation and reflection and which naturally felt part of their living area. “I wanted a garden that I could walk in and out from the kitchen without shoes, on a flat, clean and smooth surface.”
And - for a busy family - low maintenance was a priority. “Our expectation for our new garden,” said the client, “was that it would not only have a design wow factor, during the day, at night, and through the seasons, but it would also be comfortable to live in with children.”
Garden designer Simon Thomas excelled at fulfilling the brief. Then it was Landscaping Solutions’ turn to get stuck in.
Starting the Landscaping
As is so common with garden landscaping projects in London, the only entrance was through the front door and all waste had to be removed through the house.
Planting includes pleached Carpinus betulus to add height and structure, with Lonicera japonica ‘Halliana’ scrambling over the screen fencing, while Foeniculum vulgare ‘Giant Bronze’, Verbena bonariensis and Crocosmia ‘Lucifer’ add airy planting to the architectural Buxus sempervivens and Taxus baccata hedging.
“This involved the removal and manual handling of at least ten tonnes of existing soils and turf, stone paving and a timber deck,” says Ben West, owner of Landscaping Solutions. “As London gardeners, one of our daily tasks revolves around making sure that the client assumes that nobody has been in the house.”
This means that, every bit a part of our job as is excellent workmanship, is ensuring that our exit path is clean and tidy at the end of the day, ready for the clients to come home.
The landscaping teams at Landscaping Solutions really enjoy their work. As we explained in a recent post, teamwork is integral to the way we operate, so once Ben had visited the site and met the clients, he presented the concept to staff members for planning and construction feedback. Involving the guys who will be working on a project early on adds an edge to the result. “By the time we came to start work,” says Ben, “the construction team were really keen to get in and express themselves on the features and the detailing.”
Boundary lines were tweaked to accommodate neighbours’ concerns.
London gardens don’t just have problems with access. Inevitably work impinges on near neighbours who voice their concerns, and it was no different here when the boundary lines went up as the first stage of the build.
Looking after relations with the people who will have to live with your new garden is another intrinsic, and very important, part of the job. “Good communication is essential when these situations arise, along with the ability to be flexible and think on one’s feet,” explains Ben.
We tweaked heights and levels on the boundary screens, and peace was restored.
Installing the pond and water feature
A water chalice designed by David Harber was a key feature, contrasting architecturally with the rectilinear fireplace at the end of the garden. We built a circular pool of rendered blockwork, coated inside with fibreglass and finished with mosaic tiles and bullnosed coping to pick up the step treads to the upper terrace, an addition made during the build.
During the work it was decided to raise the fireplace above the rest of the garden, so a terrace was created with step leading up from the pool area. Behind the fireplace is a bespoke partitioned storage unit for bicycles, tools, toys and the gas bottle feed for the fire.
It was important to ensure the water from the pond didn’t overflow. Even though the Mint Sawn Sandstone paving was sealed, it could still stain from prolonged contact with water from the pool. We devised the remedy by installing a hidden submersible pump that could be linked to the main storm water system via sub-surface pipework and operated by remote control either from inside or away from the home. We also installed drip irrigation to all the flower beds.
Garden lighting
Remember the brief? That the garden would have a wow factor at night too? Stainless steel light fittings illuminate the screen fencing, LED light are recessed into the paving and raised beds, with strip lights illuminating the step treads and spotlights offering dramatic uplighting to the architectural planting in the beds. Again, they are remote-controlled. With the flames flickering in the fireplace, the wow factor is unmissable.
Award-winning result
At the 2011BALI National Landscape Awards the judges commented on the “exceptionally good detailing” and awarded us Principal award in the £20,000 - £50,000 category.
Most of all, though, the satisfaction of the clients in having their dream realised was the highest reward. “On a personal level it was a great feeling to stand in the middle of the action,” says Ben, “working closely with the designer, the clients and our hard-working staff, and watch everything come together.”
For more information on how Landscaping Solutions can transform your garden, contact Ben on 0208 241 2402 or email info@landscapingsolutionsltd.co.uk.
THE SECRET TO A BALI AWARD-WINNING GARDEN DESIGN
What’s the secret to a successful build when the landscaping involved clearly offers challenges?
Flexibility and communication.
Without these, a garden build becomes confused, mistakes are made and jobs have to be redone.
With them, you can win a prestigious BALI award.
Client, Quentin Zentner with the BALI award at the ceremony earlier this month.
We won’t pretend that our award-winning garden in Barnet, North London, was easy. From planning to completion has taken over four years, as work was postponed more than once to allow for the client’s family circumstances. On top of this, a major refurbishment of the house overlapped with the garden build, which meant that we were sharing the site—and the storage space in front of the house—with builders working on the interior. Work schedules needed rejigging to allow for the late arrival of the gas supply to the barbecue. And, as you can imagine over a lengthy build, the client honed their requirements further, resulting in the installation of a Rensen canopy which needed an electrical run laid down and a relocation of pleached trees that had already been planted.
The lower part of the garden offers different areas for seating.
Designer Jilayne Rickards had her work cut out from the beginning, with a triangular-shaped back garden that tapered from 7 metres width at the back of the house to 4.5 metres at the bottom. “The garden isn’t big, and the clients wanted several areas—different “rooms” with entertaining spaces,” she explains. “They’re very much party people. They had teenage daughters at the time, and they like to have family around and dance.”
Lighting is an important element in this party-orientated garden. “I wanted to make it intimate,” says Jilayne, “with the water feature, screens and sculpture lit and making a focal point of trees and main features.”
This awkward-shaped plot also offered a 2-metre drop from front to back, restricted access the width of a wheelbarrow, and heavy clay which, as winter progressed, became totally waterlogged. “You couldn’t move,” says Jilayne, “for getting that great big lump of clay around your foot that weighs a ton.” This meant, not just waiting out the worst and shifting schedules as we worked around the weather and soil conditions, but an enormous amount of soil amelioration in the form of bucket-on-shoulder shifting of horticultural grit and manure for border preparation.
Our BALI award-winning garden, designed by Jilayne Rickards, with trees, shrubs and herbaceous plants supplied by Europlants.
In circumstances like these, you have to be flexible, ready to reconsider your options, and understand exactly what jobs can be shifted around each other and which can’t. You also have to communicate with all parties involved, every day if necessary. This job clocked up hundreds of emails and hundreds of phone calls, keeping the right people informed, checking up on details, pinning down timings.
Sharing a small site with other contractors who are working to their own agenda is often one of the challenges of high-end builds, as refurbishments indoor and out tend to take place at the same time. Our team on site was headed by James. “He’s one of the best foremen I’ve ever worked with,” says Jilayne. “The contractor was doing the lighting with the client in charge, so we didn’t always know what was happening, and the contractor didn’t turn up or finish when they said they would.
“It was quite troublesome,” she adds, with a degree of understatement. “James, the foreman was just phenomenal—one of the best foremen I’ve ever worked with. He offered lots of solutions along the way and didn’t lose his cool.”
The front garden, designed to make the most of sunlit grasses supplied by Knoll Gardens.
The results speak for themselves.
Out front, the clients wanted a pretty, welcoming garden with grasses lit by sunlight and space for cars. The sunny, dry gravel garden includes a dry-stone wall using quartzite paddlestones and Irish barley quartz gravel supplied by CED. There’s also a Sureset resin-bound drive which wasn’t on our schedule but which we slipped into our schedule to install after another contractor let them down.
The front and back garden are very different spaces, so Jilayne made the connection between the two with materials and design details. The client was keen to use Cor-Ten steel and include Arabic patterns. In the back garden Jilayne combined the two with laser-cut screens.
Cor-Ten steel, stipulated by the client, makes a statement front and back.
As these were a bespoke design, there was no tried and tested way of mounting them, so we devised bespoke fixings, minimising the chance of corrosion from contact with the soil by constructing a stand that was then fixed to a feature and bolted into concrete. Cor-Ten steel continued into the front garden in the lighting posts, while the Arabic pattern was repeated in the steel drain cover—a detail which particularly delighted the client.
Trendy Black Porcelain paving, sawn sandstone coping and resin-bound gravel create a perfect finish with the bespoke gully cover.
Trendy Black Porcelain from London Stone was used as paving throughout, linking front and back, and we created a modern, minimalist wall cladding with the same material for the built-in seats around the Fire Magic gas barbecue, complementing the choice of granite for the worktop and bespoke water feature.
The side passage maintains continuity between front and back gardens with the use of steel, Trendy Black Porcelain paving and gravel leading into the rear space.
The awkward shape of the plot was disguised with a diagonal design, creating two areas below the patio, with intimate seating between panels, allowing party guests to enjoy a quiet chat, and ending on a lawned area, completely hidden from neighbours, ideal for deckchairs on a Sunday morning, reading the papers.
The finish is always important, but it can make a particular impact where materials are repeated to create cohesion. A jarring defect in one area will then cast a shadow over all the work in that material.
The Cor-Ten steel screens and sculpture are highlighted at night.
“The finish was exquisite, because that’s how Landscaping Solutions work,” said Jilayne. “I went round looking and I wanted to find something, but I couldn’t fault anything. Everything was finished perfectly.”
We’ve loved working with Jilayne so we’re delighted that she feels the same about us. While the project proved a long, arduous journey with plenty of challenges along the way, its BALI award proves all the hard work worthwhile and shows what can be done when everyone on a project is fully engaged, communicating and aiming at the same result.
Some of the Landscaping Solutions team who worked on the project: (from left) Ben West (at back) Jack Comer, Chris Makepeace, Sam Gilbert, Tom Underwood, Morris Manole.
“I’d work with Ben again in a heartbeat,” says Jilayne. “It’s just great working with people who have such high standards.”
If you’d like to discuss a garden design project and what we at Landscaping Solutions can do for you, please give us a ring on 0208 2412402 or email us at info@landscapingsolutionsltd.co.uk