PLANTING DESIGN INSPIRATION

I wanted to used naturalistic planting within the garden, using native species that would thrive without the need for a lot of maintenance. I also thought it would create a nice contrast with some of the sharper hard landscaping elements within the garden. 
There will be pleached trees along the length of one boundary to create privacy and a sense of height. On the opposite border there will be a beech hedge, which when it turns copper at the end of the year will provide structural interest and frame the garden..

CHICKENS IN THE GARDEN

I like the idea having a productive side to the garden as well as aesthetic, and as I am not incorporating a vegetable patch in to the design, I thought chickens would be fun. They would also be good for the children and would add a sense of life and movement to the garden. I wanted to keep the coop relatively simple so that it would blend into the back ground of the overall design and not become too much of a feature

ELEVATION

A really nice example of an elevation drawing from a plan. The thing I like in particular is the grid pattern for the planting plan to show width, and the lines on the elevation to show height. Simple but effective.

WHITE OAK DECKING

White Oak is the wood i've chosen for any decking areas in the garden as it has a light colour that will work well with the interior furniture as well as the main outdoor table. It also has a slightly rustic finish to it, which i thought would be in keeping with the contrasts between contemporary and traditional design in the garden.
As with the use of granite + water in the garden, i thought wood was also an important natural material to use somewhere.

 

GRANITE SPHERE WATER FEATURES

In keeping with my use of materials found in the Swedish landscape I wanted to incorporate  water in to the garden. It is also a good way to distract from the background traffic noise that was heard during the site analysis.  
I thought it would be interesting to use granite in another form - so that I will have granite setts, granite paving and these texured granite spheres. This will provide a sense of continuity within the garden. I want to put one of these water features near the house/sitting area + one up by the studio as these are both places where people can appreciate them in close proximity.

GABRIELE GALIMBERTI

GABRIELE GALIMBERTI
Photography
www.gabrielegalimberti.com

I am new to the work of G.G but I really love this style of documentation. Two of his projects that particularly stand out to me are 'Toy Stories' and 'Delicatessen with love'.

TOY STORIES.
“The richest children were more possessive. At the beginning, they wouldn’t want me to touch their toys, and I would need more time before they would let me play with them,” says the Italian, who would often join in with a child’s games before arranging the toys and taking the photograph. “In poor countries, it was much easier. Even if they only had two or three toys, they didn’t really care. In Africa, the kids would mostly play with their friends outside.” Ben Machell, The Time Magazine

DELICATESSEN WITH LOVE.
"Gabriele travelled around the world and, next to thousands of other adventures, turned into a curious and hungry grandson for the grannies of all the countries he visited.  Appealing to their natural cooking care and their inevitable pride in their best recipe, common factors to all grandmothers in the world, Gabriele persuaded them to do their best in the kitchen.... He has come back with a cookery book of detailed recipes that mix love, photography and travel amongst the many exotic ingredients.  Indeed, each for each grandmother he has produced a portrait of the cook, and easy to follow recipe and an image of the extraordinary and at times mouthwatering final dish". Arianna Rinaldo

 

NOLA

Nola
nola.se
 

Nola is a Swedish company specialising in contemporary outdoor furniture that is made using innovative construction methods, materials and ideas. I think some of these pieces would fit perfectly in this garden as they have a sense of fun and play but are also really interesting pieces of design in their own right. 

Here are a few of my favourites:

Pylon Bench.

Two in One Chair. 

 

Picnic Tables.

This could make a really good play zone for the children as well as being a seat or table..

Sunday Bench.

ULF NORJFELL

*****This post is from the archives of this blog, but he is a really big influence for me in this project so I thought is was a good idea to re-post this here*****

Ulf Nordfjell
Landscape Architect
Sweden
http://www.nordfjellcollection.se/ 

Swedish garden designer Ulf Nordfjell is one of my biggest design heroes. When describing his garden design style, he states:

 "...Swedish nature is always present in my design and I like to use natural materials, but the structure of my parks and gardens is always modern, with very strong design elements". 

For me the combination of clean, modern hard landscaping in materials like wood and stone combined with looser more naturalistic planting creates gardens that are beautiful, strong balanced and functional.

I will reference his work a lot when working on this current project. The garden design styles I have chosen (woodland/japanese/minimalist) will need careful consideration when getting the right balance of materials and landscaping. Nordfjell seems to always be conscious of not letting one element dominate the others and of leaving space where it is needed. 
 

 

  

GRANITE

Sweden is a volcanic country, so i thought that the stone used in the garden whether it is in the paving or stone as a feature, should be igneous rock. I think granite could be a good option as it is available in many forms and colours and can be finished in numerous ways.

Granite Paving.

Granite Setts.

Natural Granite Stone.

Marshalls Granite List - showing the range of colours + finishes available:

www.marshalls.co.uk/commercial/natural-stone/granite