It’s definitely Winter here at Manor Farm Barn this week as we’ve had the first flurry of snow. It looked so pretty but didn’t last long sadly. The Winter sun has taken over showing the Hakonechloa off in it’s Autumn colour against the Cotswold stone…
Busy busy with work as always – I have several projects being built at the moment so am spending my time travelling about visiting 3 separate sites & my clients both new & existing. On top of that I’m madly trying to get some drawing done. All good – it’s great to be busy – this has been a week of site visits…
Bath project is currently being built. This is a scheme I designed a couple of years ago but the interiors had to be completed before we could start on the garden. It’s a fantastic classical Georgian Bath stone townhouse over 5 floors very close to the famous crescent. Here’s my drawing of the proposal
Here are a couple of shots showing the before & the plot last week. I can’t wait to see this one complete…
This garden has changed from a small terrace & sloping ‘lawn’ into a courtyard garden on 2 levels. We’re using beautiful natural limestone paving by Artisans of Devizes & the walls with water spouts are being clad in large format porcelain to emulate corten. The bespoke troughs are being manufactured in real corten & will be installed last. You won’t notice the garage when it’s complete as it is to be painted dark grey & we will be planting fabulous espaliers in front.
My Henley project has also been a couple of years in the planning as my client Zoe has also had a huge amount of building work done first. It is still ongoing inside but at last Tom & his team can crack on outside now the scaffolding is down…
Then there’s my Amersham project for my favourite client Jane whom I’ve worked with for many years. She has had a contemporary house built in the old town & I have designed a courtyard garden on 2 levels to match. Like the Bath project it was originally a sloping garden which was not remotely appealing. This new smart garden has several places to entertain or perch (note the giant bespoke table base I designed awaiting a superb stone top), a beautiful pool, rill, kitchen garden & fabulous mature trees…
As you can see it’s all town gardens being built at the moment – making a change from large estates I often design. These are always so satisfying as every detail counts. They will all be complete in the next few weeks so I’ve asked James to take some professional shots of them all in the Spring – as always watch this space!
All for now, I’m off to my drawing board
