Garden Visit

This May we visited Knepp walled garden. A challenging and inspirational garden project asking the question ‘ How can you rewild a garden?’

We have been exploring gravel planting for a while, loving the opportunity to move amongst plants rather than purely past them as in traditional borders; to grow a 'complex mosaic of habitats’ on a leaner growing medium as opposed to fertilising and soil improving, and embracing the spontaneity that emerges as self-seeders ‘find their way’.

For us - designing gardens for people - our challenge and joy is to integrate some of this informality with the calm, strong spaces we create, resulting in an ever-changing, ephemeral and seasonal interplay of shapes, colour, space and form.

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Visit Knepp

Quatrefoil House

Hyde + Hyde Architects have recently won the RIBA South Regional Award 2023 for their project Quatrefoil House.

Angus Thompson Design were the Landscape Architects for this project by Hyde + Hyde Architects — a stunning example of how a contemporary extension can be added to a historic property, completely transforming the interior without compromising the original’s character in the wider streetscape. The meticulous restoration and ornamentation are impressive, creating a truly unique and stylish family home.

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Nature Ascending

Back in 2009 we designed a Gold medal winning garden for the RHS Chelsea Flower Show .

Titled ’Nature Ascending’, it still feels very relevant today. Inspired by forgotten corners of larger gardens or nature reserves, the garden actively encouraged wildlife to share an urban space. Contemporary architectural detailing included 'built in' bird boxes and feeders, solitary insect nesting sites. Water provided a further layer for amphibian life whilst the floating boardwalk and platform provided shade & shelter. The naturalistic planting was carefully selected to attract as diverse a range of insects as possible.

‘Nature Ascending’ pt 2 on Main Avenue would be fun!

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Wildflower Meadows

A well known but counter-intuitive fact is that the poorer the soil, the better the wildflower meadow.

There are, however, different mixes available to suit a range of sites, and varying ways to lessen the fertility of the soil. There are annual and perennial options, native and non-native.

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The Oudolf Garten on the Vitra Campus

A garden created by Dutch designer Piet Oudolf was planted on the Vitra Campus in Weil am Rhein. The artfully composed wilderness will be in full bloom from summer to early autumn.

Dutchman Piet Oudolf is regarded as a pioneer for a generation of garden designers who in the late 1980s began to question conventional practices, finding traditional landscape gardening too decorative, labour-intensive and resource-consuming. Instead they turned to perennial, often self-regenerating plants, shrubs, grasses, bushes and wildflowers, which had been long ignored as garden plants, and favoured an equally unconventional layout of the plantings.

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