This was a well-loved garden but our clients wanted to adapt it to fit better with their lives now that their children had grown up. They wanted an elegant, peaceful space to enjoy from their new architect-designed kitchen extension both during the day and at night. Planting was to be formal and balanced, and there was a particular requirement to provide some additional screening from the neighbours, particularly at the end of the garden.

The garden is not very deep but it is quite wide and there is a long side return which gets little light but can be seen from the principal living rooms of the house so the garden needed to have two focal points – one from the new kitchen extension and one from the original sitting room and dining room at the front. Charlotte Rowe Garden Design designed the new garden to wrap around the new extension, echoing the colour and style palette used inside.

The pivotal design element of the garden is the long water which can be seen both from the new kitchen and from the existing dining room. The gentle sound of water can be heard falling through a ‘key hole’ spout and the eye is led to the water feature and into the garden via a double row of clipped box balls. The planting within this side return is shade loving and evergreen and includes Phyllostachys nigra, Stipa arundinacea, Polystichum setiferum and Galium odoratum.

The paving is smooth cream Indian sandstone edged in Cotswold buff gravel and there are raised beds with formal planting centring on clipped bay trees including roses, peonies and lavender on either side. Other plants include Viburnum opulus ‘Compactus’, Euphorbia characias subsp.'wulfenii' and Philadelphus ‘Belle Etoile’. Hand-made trellis, painted a beautiful pale blue/grey, the same colour as the cupboards in the adjoining kitchen, act as theatrical screens and push the boundaries of the garden out. Behind is a row of pleached hornbeams (Carpinus betulus) which provide additional screening from the neighbours’ houses to the North.