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This west-facing garden was attached to an early Victorian 5-floor London townhouse, owned by a professional couple. They no longer had time to maintain the existing lawn and planting and wanted a low maintenance garden with interesting hard landscaping. They felt the design needed to be updated to compliment the modern interior of the house and wanted more seating and entertaining space. They also wanted to make more of a shady part at the end. The garden is 5m by 20m . My design was arrived at through a process of iterative simplification. It uses sweeping arcs to give the garden a spacious feel and provides an enlarged terrace and a tesselated sandstone path which grows into a further shaded seating area in trees at the end. The space is intended to be exciting to be in and to look down on from above. Scented Mediterranean planting is used in the sunnier areas and closely planted white-stemmed birches are used in the shaded area to make a feature when viewed from the house. Lighting is used to highlight the trees and path at night. A distinctive oak set of table and chairs compliments the furniture inside the house and an integral oak bench is used for additional seating. The oak theme also includes a concealed oak tool cupboard to house the few garden tools which will be needed. This design was one of two finalists in the Horticulture Week landscape awards in 2007. | 
Design philosophy
