
Garden Before
This garden was tucked away in a lovely quiet spot near Kempston in Bedfordshire. It was a large plot with mature trees and shrubs that had been allowed to become overgrown and now dominated.

Garden Before
The hedges were dense and made the garden appear much narrower than it actually was and too many Laurels and Conifers made the sunny garden dark and dank. The brief was to totally redesign the garden and patio and add an integral path through the lawn to access a new wooden summerhouse.The first job was to decide which trees were to stay or go and the garden was cleared of all the unwanted hedges and shrubs.
The new summerhouse was then positioned at the bottom of the garden in an area previously never used as it was too overgrown. Next, came a snaking gravel path to connect the patio and house to it.
A large patio of Indian Sandstone was then put down to provide somewhere to sit and eat off the kitchen and dining room. When I first visited the garden it was predominantly green in colour with very little in the way of flowering shrubs or
perennials. The owners were rightly keen to change this and wanted me to use red and orange in their new planting scheme. I love the late flowering daisies Helenium ‘Waltraut’ especially when planted with grasses. I also like to use Crocosmia which are a favourite of mine. Both of these orange flowers are great planted en masse to add bold splashes of colour to borders.