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The Eco Garden Worsley

Residential Landscaping Design
View from the dining area inside the house and out to the finished garden.
Bug wall, green walls, sculpture panels and Cor-ten pots.
Brunnera macrophylla leaves in green walls framed by trailing tendrils, Vinca minor f. alba 'Gertrude Jekyll'
View from back of garden looking towards seating area outside bi-fold house doors.
View across garden, stone effect cushions designed and made by Stéphanie Marin, Nice, France.
View from the back of the garden to seating area outside bi fold house doors.
Western red cedar was used to form the sculptural background frames for the Cor-ten Steel pots.
A perfect haze of summer colour mix of Verbena, Echinacea, with green walls in background.
Even dragonflies have turned up in the garden to feed on nectar rich plants.
A bumble bee busy collecting from the rich nectar store.
White butterfly adds to the long list of insects making good use of the gardens rich nectar store.
Rust veined boulder, salvaged from a disused Japanese Garden adds texture and compliment to the garden aesthetic.
Bespoke log store filled with cherry wood prunings from a tree in the garden.
Hidden planters to rear of sculpture panels provide the perfect place to grow some salad leaves and other shade loving edibles.
Picture of the garden as first viewed looking out from the house.
Picture of the garden as first viewed looking back to the house.

Form And Function

A Garden in Worsley, Lancashire.

Question; how do I make a garden relevant? Relevant to what and to whom? The garden owner’s needs, the changing environment, the passing seasons, conservation, conversation? Then there is the question of modernity within the context of the environment and traditionalism. Lawn, do you want a lawn, is a lawn feasible, perhaps not, its high maintenance and rarely ever trouble free. And expected planting beds? And what are the new plants I will think to introduce for? Do you want to grow things just to look at, or do you also grow for the table and the pot? Herbs, maybe some salad leaves? Wood for the burner? Can we have habitat and blur the boundaries into soft edges, a frame within a frame, that captures the trees beyond. How do you then cram all this into a small suburban space and still make it functional. It needs to be a picture, which is a picture whatever the weather and whatever the season, but equally it needs to fill and flow with the seasons as perennials lift their sleepy heads, break the surface of the soil in preparation for spectacle. This week the Cherry tree creates a white umbrella, lending airiness and purity whilst its trunk casts pleasant shadows on the fence behind. The apple tree not far, heavy in white bud on the cusp of open blossom ready to offer a yet to come harvest when the air will fill with the wondrous smell of baking pastry, apple and cinnamon. The azalea not to be outdone fills and will soon too shine. The fig in the corner not long planted but already fruiting. The point of a garden is surely its connection to all the senses. The answer, this garden which I call the Eco contemporary garden, it’s there i hope in the pictures, visible, connecting, answering a need by filling the frame of an eye. On a rare day the sun shines and the air fills with birdsong as I wait for the bees and the bugs to make this garden home.