The Client
Oliver Duff of Duff and Co, Colchester. An APL member with a strong reputation for building beautiful and robust gardens throughout Essex.
The Design Brief
A medium sized urban back garden with mature trees and shrubs. The homeowner had wanted to introduce a garden office and to re-landscape the garden accordingly. However, some features, such as a shed and those beautiful trees were to remain in situ.
The garden slopes and so changes in level needed to be accommodated. Herbaceous planting was to be refreshed and enlivened but the whole garden was to be reasonably low maintenance.
The Design
To accommodate the slope in this garden, the My Garden Design team devised some clever level changes that would not disturb the roots of any plants to be kept.
The house doors open out onto a large patio cum dining area with views across the whole garden. The design offers a feeling of space AND privacy.
A path in similar stone to the patio leads garden visitors on a journey past mature shrubs. It wends its way to the offset steps that take us to another patio area. This catches the morning sun and is the ideal place level to enjoy a cup of coffee on a nice day.
From the second patio, a retaining wall and a set of steps takes us up to the utility area. This is where the garden office sits alongside a storage shed. The office is “framed” by shrubs which offers a pleasing view from the house.
For the utility area our designer recommends a cost-effective gravel surface.
Optional Extras
3D Design
It’s very hard to picture level changes when looking at a 2D design and so our client requested 3D visualisations. This allowed the homeowner to understand how retaining walls and steps would look as well as how his much loved shrubs would fit into the new garden.
The Client’s reaction
Oliver Duff was clearly pleased with the service. This is what he has to say……
“Using MGD to design this garden undoubtedly won the job for me. It separates the men from the boys when your providing a professional design. Not only so the customer can visualise that you’re quoting for but so any changes are easily identified and charged for. I’ll definitely use this service again.”
