Belsize Park
In this large and unusually square garden near Primrose Hill, the beautiful old boundary walls were entirely hidden by overgrown planting. The clients – a homeopath and an art historian – commissioned the design just as building work to the house began. A new ground-floor extension, designed by Southstudio was planned to occupy most of the existing patio and destroy access to the upper part of the garden.
The rear façade of the house is made up of two parts; one half the garage with consulting rooms above, the other the main house with a library and large office on the ground floor.
The design for the garden needed to tie these halves together and at the same time provide access to the garden from three points; the garage, the ground floor office and the first floor balcony. It also needed to include a generous lawn for grandchildren to play on as well as various seating areas, each with a different outlook.
Porcelain was chosen for the patio so that the same easy-to maintain material could be used both inside and out, with a seamless connection between the two. Wide shallow steps connect the patio to the rest of the garden, and hardwood trellising was introduced to screen the balcony and its new staircase from the neighbours.
Rather than ubiquitous white or beige, the retaining walls are painted a pale dusky pink which is picked up in the planting; pink roses, astrantia and persicaria complemented by purple geraniums and thalictrum combined with blue irises, campanula and phlox, all set against a backdrop of hornbeam and yew hedging used to divide the garden into discreet spaces and provide winter structure.
Wall-trained fruit trees at the rear occupy the sunniest end of this otherwise fairly shady north-facing garden.
Completed 2017
Landscape contractor: Buffalo Landscapes
