This year, I’ve worked with a number of garden designers to capture new gardens that they’ve planned and planted for families in urban areas. The ‘family garden’ design has to cover many briefs: often a home office, exercise area, space to children to enjoy, somewhere to entertain friends, more than just one seating area, hard landscaping, softened by seasonal planting. You’ll see here – for example, in this haven in Essex from designer Coralie Estrade – that done properly, it really will offer all that the phrase ‘garden room’ promises.
It’s worth noting that the pictures I’m about to show you are the fruits of many months of discussion, planning, drawing out – and particularly, working with top-quality construction teams. The best advice I’ve heard is if you’re redesigning your garden, think ahead, don’t do it in a rush, do it once and do it properly. It’s something I often see Pollyanna Wilkinson advising in her Instagram stories, so let’s continue with a couple of her elegant and practical designs in the London suburb of Richmond.
Polly demonstrates in both these gardens that it’s worth taking barbecuing a serious step further, with the addition of a fully functioning, eye-catching outdoor kitchen if your family enjoy spending time outdoors.
Coralie Estrade is a talented Cotswolds-based garden designer who trained with the renowned Marcus Barnett Studio. She worked with Matthew Wilson’s team on the award-winning ‘Welcome to Yorkshire’ garden at the Chelsea Flower Show 2016 – the one incorporating elements of York Minster. I visited this family garden design in Essex in midsummer to see the plant combinations at their height. The garden has a dining area for entertaining; it also has cedar-clad benches, child-friendly lawn area, a water feature, with a storage shed and fencing softened and hidden by planting.
I do love the use of charred timber fencing juxtaposed with the cool flecked stone, against all the different and vibrant forms of leaf texture.
Surrey-based Helen Rose Wilson had designed a garden including pool for this gorgeous family-friendly entertainment space. I particularly loved going back at twilight to see how the carefully thought-out lighting added to the atmosphere, extending the hours of use you would get from the garden. Her family garden design also included a couple of dining areas, footballs goals and golf nets, table tennis area, greenhouse and vegetable planters. There’s all-important screening for a bin area, a pool house and an outdoor shower.
Different heights of pots, borders and raised beds mean that the planting interest is varied and manageable. Once again you’ll spot a variety of materials – a mix of different stone, decking, paving and so on – which keep each of the areas vibrant and interesting to the senses. This was all expertly constructed by Cobham Court Landscaping, and did not go unnoticed by the Association of Professional Landscapers who have shortlisted it for their prestigious awards in 2023.
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