THE LANDSCAPING SOLUTIONS BLOG


Welcome to our Blog. Inspiration, updates and industry trends from the team at Landscaping Solutions.

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.

Garden Design By Landscaping Solutions In Clapham, London.

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.

David Harber Water Feature Garden Design And Build By Landscaping Solutions

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.

Landscaping Solutions Clapham London

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.”

Simon Thomas Design Build By Landscaping Solutions Surrey

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.

Award Winning Garden Design By Landscaping Solutions

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.


​GETTING THE DETAILS RIGHT IN AN AWARD-WINNING GARDEN DESIGN

There’s what you want from a garden and there’s what it and life impose on you. That’s where garden design and skilful landscaping step in - to marry the two into a something that meets your vision, services your needs and deals with its problems in a satisfactory manner. Oh, and looks good too.

Dining area garden design, Barnes, London.

Timber slatted fencing increased the privacy of the garden while the limited palette of colour, requested by the client, added to the calm elegance.

This garden in Barnes, south-west London, designed by Justin Greer, was built by us in 2012 and, we’re proud to say, garnered a BALI award for Domestic Garden Construction (costing between £30,000 and £60,000).

What were the problems? Well, it shared issues that we see frequently in London gardens. The plot is pretty much triangular, 10 metres wide at the house, narrowing to 2 metres along its 20-metre length. For tools and toys, it needed storage space that didn’t detract from the look of the garden, and it needed a greater sense of privacy from the houses close by.

In addition, drainage of rainwater from the rear extension had to be dealt with and, as happens so often with major garden projects, enormous changes were taking place in the house at the same time, the most major being the digging of a new cellar.

Barnes garden before work on the design commenced.

The triangular shape of the plot was very clear in the garden before its makeover.

These are merely obstacles that we meet frequently in the course of our work, however. Certainly they were nothing to interfere with our mission to remove the dilapidated decking patio and completely replace the existing unstructured and obviously awkwardly shaped garden with an enticing, more formally laid-out space that would indulge the clients’ desire to be outdoors, relaxing, dining and barbecuing with the family.

Creating the garden’s calm, relaxing atmosphere is garden designer Justin Greer’s strongly geometrical layout, with space for entertaining next to the house, a gas barbecue, a play area screened from the main garden and house. The whole has an elegant, timeless feel.

Sawn Yorkstone and reclaimed bricks garden design.

Sawn Yorkstone was used as a traditional paving and, here, benchtop, to complement the reclaimed bricks and old boundary wall.

Part of achieving this feel lies in the materials used. As anyone who’s been in an old London garden knows, the boundaries are usually tall walls, made of weathered London bricks. This was no different, but one of the boundary walls had reached demolition point, so it was replaced before we began work. This provided the ideal opportunity to create coherence in materials by matching design elements to the remaining boundary wall and we recycled the bricks into the raised beds and water feature. This required a fair amount of work in cleaning up the bricks - we also had to bring in some top-ups from the London Reclaim Brick Merchants - but it was worth it for the sense of age and history they add to the design.

Landscaping Solutions precise planting for formal garden design.

Precise planting is absolutely necessary to make a formal garden design work.

Of course, a formal feel is more easily imposed on a regular-shaped plot - think Roman piazzas or Hampton Court’s Privy Garden.

Here, the hardwood screen not only hides the play area and storage shed but squares off the space in a backdrop to the pleached hornbeams, which in combination with box hedging, standard bay trees and Quercus Ilex add the backbone of formal planting. This needs to be placed precisely for the effect to work as planned, otherwise the eye is drawn to the one trunk that’s not quite in line.

Finally, underpinning the design are the foundations that make it work - the sump for the water feature, hidden beneath the polished pebbles, is reinforced to avoid it being damaged when people walk over it; the hard-landscaped areas drain into plant border and through the polished pebbles.

Barnes, London garden design by Landscaping Solutions.

Polished pebbles create contrast with the sawn paving, as well as areas for rain to drain away.

And what about that rainwater draining off the extension? Hidden pipework takes the run-off along the east boundary and into a soak-away beneath the children’s trampoline, which was placed on artificial turf. This was to ensure the soak-away was away from the footings of the old wall, where it could have eventually made it unstable. It took careful planning and installation.

Also demanding a lot of planning, discussion, collaboration and co-operation was the fact that we had to build the deck before the light well was put down into the new cellar. As we explained in The Secret to a BALI Award-Winning Garden Design, communication is key to making sure a project runs smoothly, especially when you’re sharing the space with other contractors.

Landscaping Solutions, Barnes, London garden design.

Strong horizontals slow the eye as you look down the garden, drawing attention away from the narrowing shape.

Thanks to preparation, communication and our team of skilled landscapers, the build was not only completed within the course of two months - August to September 2012 - but also gave us a BALI National Landscape Award Winner in 2013.

If you’re a garden designer and would like to discuss how we can help you with your next project, or if you have a garden would like more information on how we at Landscaping Solutions can help you with its design and landscaping, contact us on 0208 2412402 or email us at info@landscapingsolutionsltd.co.uk.

THE SECRET TO A BALI AWARD-WINNING GARDEN DESIGN

BALI Award winning garden by Landscaping Solutions.

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.

BALI Award Ceremony

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.

 Garden seating areas.

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.”

Intimate garden lighting

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.

 Landscaping Solutions BALI Award 2018

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.”

Landscaping Solutions front garden designed by Jilayne Rickards.

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.

Bespoke Design Corten Steel Light Posts.

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.

Front garden gully cover.

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.

Black Porcelain from London Stone

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.

Cor-Ten steel screens and sculpture highlighted at night.

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.

The Landscaping Solutions team.

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

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