A garden design for a new build property in Steeton, near Skipton. This was a blank canvas, quite literally – turf and a few paving flags – so typical of new built homes.
The clients, a young professional couple, wanted to create their dream garden, to enjoy for years to come. Looking to create an informal / cottagey look that would blend with their more modern house, their wish list included a good sized seating / dining area, a generous lawn, somewhere to grow fruit & veg and softening overlooking properties.
The planting design used elements with strong structure (eg pleached purple beech and sections of yew hedging) to define the various spaces. The planting palette used combinations which would do well in the different microclimates within the garden, whilst also using repeated plants to unify the whole garden.
“We now have a garden that we can use all year round and which looks great! It is the part of the home we like the most, rather than an empty source of frustration.
Melissa is good at challenging the ideas we suggested and offering alternatives to make sure that we are certain of the path chosen and then incorporated this into the design and maintenance plan. She has fulfilled our vision for what the garden could be.
It was worth doing the detailed design and planning as the landscapers were pleased to have that level of detail to work with. Also having you as project manager and liaise with the landscapers meant that issues could be dealt with directly as they occurred rather than through us, which would have added delay and removed expertise from the equation. You took our detailed brief and list of ideas and helped to realise this in a structured way, especially regarding the transitions between zones and the issues we had with our boundaries. Painting the fence, even when we were still months off from the build (on your suggestion) made a real difference in how we felt about the garden and gave us a a good ‘quick win’ and helped us to realise what a transformation it was going to be!
Your planting design has given us structure and cohesion that simply “works” within which we have the confidence (after your coaching) to experiment and learn. Thank you Melissa!”
Build in progress
By First Light Landscaping Ltd
