Richmond Garden
Completed in September 2019 after an 18 month build, this residential garden in Richmond was shortlisted for ‘best small residential garden’ at the 2022 Society of Garden Designers Awards, and was featured the previous year in House & Garden magazine. The garden contains dual level sawn Yorkstone dining terraces with bespoke steps, a 12m-long living wall, and a water feature running the entire length of the garden.
The space is divided into distinct zones; close to the house it is formal in character, with crisp clean lines of sawn Yorkstone paving. The lowest terrace provides an Iroko bench with outdoor seat cushions, creating a comfortable lounge area beneath the verdant living wall.
Deep Yorkstone steps lead up to the dining terrace and to a lawn with planted borders. Stepping-stones skip through the lawn to a productive planting area, screened from view by bespoke louvered timber screens. Lighting is a key part of the garden at night and individual lights placed between the timber fins create a dramatic effect, all of the steps are under-lit and the water rill is elegantly illuminated.
A bespoke timber-clad outbuilding at the rear of the garden is settled in a naturalistic woodland area. Here the planting is less formal and loose in feel, and includes the origin of the water feature, bubbling up from a dish carved out of a Yorkstone boulder. Starting as a natural stream, water then flows into a slick Corten steel rill, finally pooling into a lily pond, contained by a Corten steel trough.
A seam of Yorkstone runs through the garden, tying the individual spaces together, from the terraces, to the bespoke curved pathway winding alongside the stream, through the productive area to the woodland studio, and eventually to the rear exit.
Photographs by Britt Willoughby Dyer
