Woodland Garden

 

 

Address: Birch HouseStonton Road, Church Langton, Northamptonshire.

 

 

Client: Mr. and Mrs. Kolka

 

 

Status: Completed 2017

 

 

Project Description: Woodland Garden, Phase One.

 

 

A mature woodland garden in Leicestershire required a complete makeover to provide the owners with a useable family garden with some open lawn areas, the old garden had the character of the 'Gibbard Garden' in Harlow Essex. It was decided to lean towards this quirky garden design style using as many of the existing trees and features as possible but without copying the original in any way and retaining the character of the original garden. 

 

The client required a garden that could be divided into sections with compartments that could be discovered whilst on a journey around the garden, with seating areas provided in the garden design to stop and chill when required. The garden lent itself to an informal design with reworking and restoration of the existing elements, when it was deemed appropriate new features were installed to provide new focal points, showy plants were employed to do this with the help of pots or urns elsewhere in the garden. A dried up wildlife pond was enlarged and reinstated with more generous grass paths positioned around the pond which could only be discovered by the visitor if a certain route was taken whilst tempting glimpses from an Azalea walk teased the visitor but the pond remained concealed by existing evergreen trees until the correct exit was chanced upon.

 

Planting was chosen to provide seasonality but with low maintenance in mind so the plants were mostly evergreen and suited to shady conditions, where sunny pockets allowed some herbaceous planting was used, the planting around the pond was suited to damp soils. The soil conditions allowed the planting of Azaleas, Rhododendrons, Magnolias and other acid-loving plants. Hedges and blocks of Buxus provided additional structure to the planting scheme.