Nestled in the heart of Queens Park, this front garden is a vibrant celebration of colour, scent and thoughtful design — a true cottage garden brought to life in a city setting.

Vision & Concept

The clients wanted a garden that felt lush, welcoming and full of life — even within a limited urban frontage. The design embraces the spirit of cottage gardens: layers of florals, soft forms, pollinator appeal, and a sense of spontaneity. The approach was to combine beauty and utility, weaving in features that serve practical needs without detracting from the garden’s charm.

A key structural feature is a bespoke shed made from reclaimed materials. Rather than presenting it as a mere storage unit, the shed becomes a garden focal point — its characterful texture and materials complement the planting. Above, a living roof of culinary herbs provides fragrance, visual interest, and cleverly conceals bin storage behind verdant cover.

Planting Palette & Atmosphere

The planting scheme is rich and layered, creating a tapestry of form, colour and fragrance. Key species highlighted in the design include:

• Foxgloves
• Alliums
• Centranthus
• Sissyrinchiums

These plants, chosen for their airy structure, long bloom periods, and ecological value, help the garden feel soft and relaxed yet rich in seasonal dynamics. They also attract pollinators and support biodiversity within an urban context.

Throughout the seasons, the garden shifts: bursts of pastel blooms, changes in foliage texture, and movement in grasses or smaller perennials. The result is a living, breathing space that responds to light, weather and the rhythms of nature.

Challenges & Solutions

1. Urban constraints & practical needs
Front gardens often have to accommodate bins, utility access, and limited depth. The shed with living roof cleverly addresses these points: it houses bins discreetly and provides structural form without feeling utilitarian.

2. Balancing richness and restraint
Too much exuberance in a small space can feel cluttered. The planting is curated to avoid overcrowding; there’s breathing room between forms, and strong points of structure (shed, paths, occasional evergreen anchors) ground the composition.

3. Longevity & maintenance
Perennials and self-seeding species were selected for resilience, so that while the garden evolves, it retains coherence. The reclaimed shed materials age naturally, and the living roof adds a low-maintenance green element that improves with time.

Outcome & Experience

Today, the garden reads as a romantic, yet grounded urban cottage front. The shed becomes part of the narrative, not a necessary afterthought. The planting softens edges, drifts toward the pavement, and invites closer inspection. The fragrance of herbs and flowers mingles with city sounds, creating a sensory buffer.

People passing by are drawn in by its richness; residents benefit from a daily encounter with nature, even from their doorstep. What was once a utilitarian frontage becomes a layered, living introduction to the home.

Key Lessons & Takeaways

• Structure with character — features like sheds or walls don’t have to be invisible; they can enhance the design if done with care and materials.
• Dual-function elements — the living roof and bin screening show how utility and beauty can coincide.
• Choose for seasons & ecology — pick plants with reliable performance, seasonal interest, and ecological value (pollinators, etc.).
• Curate exuberance — even in a cottage scheme, restraint in spacing and structural anchors keeps the design readable.

Tucked into the historic heart of Bath, Cool as a Cat is a city garden with attitude — confident, understated, and full of texture. It’s a space where reclaimed materials and soft planting come together in a refined take on modern rustic, balancing the raw with the delicate in just the right measure.

The bones of the garden are strong and characterful. Weathered deck boards underfoot speak of time and use, while a bespoke pergola in rich, rust-toned corten steel adds architectural presence without overpowering the space. Reclaimed bricks lend the garden warmth and authenticity, grounding it in a language that’s both old and entirely of the moment.

A reflective mirror — cleverly placed — doubles the garden’s sense of depth, bouncing light back into the space and amplifying its most beautiful views. At the centre, a bespoke L-shaped bench invites long summer evenings and spontaneous gatherings, its clean lines softened by the textures of planting all around.

Anchoring the design, multi-stemmed Amelanchiers offer delicate spring blossom, dappled shade, and fiery autumn colour. Beneath them, a rich planting palette of foxgloves, clipped Buxus balls, climbing roses, Salvia ‘Caradonna’, and frothy Alchemilla mollis (Lady’s Mantle) creates a dynamic blend of structure and movement. It’s a planting scheme that works hard — thriving in a city setting while still feeling romantic and a little wild around the edges.

Cool as a Cat is a garden built on contrasts: industrial yet soft, tidy yet loose, urban yet timeless. It’s a retreat designed for real life — layered, laid-back, and quietly full of charm.

Set against the classic architecture of a period home in Primrose Hill, this front garden is a lesson in restraint, rhythm, and refinement. Designed to complement rather than compete, it quietly frames the building’s historic charm while introducing a contemporary language through clean lines and bold plant forms.

At the heart of the scheme, a trio of multi-stemmed Acer palmatum anchors the space. With their sculptural trunks and delicately layered foliage, they draw the eye upward — providing year-round elegance and seasonal drama. These living sculptures are the undisputed stars, offering both lightness and depth as they shift with the seasons.

Beneath them, a tapestry of evergreen grasses weaves movement into the design, softened further by low mounds of dwarf Pittosporum, their rounded forms echoing the garden’s quiet geometry. This underplanting brings texture and subtle colour variation throughout the year, ensuring the space never feels static.

Opposite, clipped Taxus cubes provide grounding contrast — their dense, dark structure a bold counterpoint to the airy acers. It’s this tension between solid and soft, natural and refined, that gives the garden its quiet power. Nothing shouts, but everything is intentional.

Materials were chosen to blend seamlessly with the home’s architectural detailing, and the layout ensures ease of movement while maintaining a sense of sculpted calm. The result is a garden that enhances curb appeal, yes — but more importantly, one that creates a moment of pause, a composed welcome, and a timeless first impression.

Across from the wide open greenery of Queen’s Park in North London, a garden quietly rebels. Sleeping Beauty is less a designed space and more a whispered invitation — a celebration of nature left to dream for itself. Created between 2015 and 2016, this intimate city plot embraces the idea of controlled wildness, where structure exists only to frame the chaos of untamed growth.

Self-seeding cottage garden favourites and edible plants jostle for space in a joyful, anarchic blend of form and fragrance. Here, foxgloves spring up where they please, poppies dance between courgettes, and sweet peas twine themselves through anything willing to offer support. It’s a garden that evolves daily, unapologetically seasonal and wonderfully alive.

Rustic timber pergolas rise like weathered sculptures, shading Himalayan daybeds — an unexpected nod to faraway places, tucked among English flora. A winding path of worn sandstone setts gently guides you through the space, encouraging slow discovery. At its heart, a bespoke seating area built from reclaimed jarrah railway sleepers offers a place to sit among the colour and texture, surrounded by the hum of bees and the soft creak of climbing plants.

In clever touches, mirrors are placed throughout — not simply decorative, but designed to catch and bounce light into shaded corners, stretching the illusion of space in this compact urban plot. They offer reflections not just of the garden, but of the gardener’s philosophy: that nature, when trusted, creates its own kind of poetry.

Sleeping Beauty isn’t just a garden — it’s a love letter to the imperfect, the evolving, and the free.

In the quiet residential heart of Chiswick, The Lawn Lounge is a contemporary garden that blends modernity with softness, precision with romance. It’s a space designed for daily living, for quiet lounging, for summer lunches and the simple pleasure of stepping barefoot onto grass.

At its core, a mint sandstone terrace anchors the space — cool-toned and understated, it offers the perfect contrast to the warm wood tones of a bespoke L-shaped cedar bench, complete with hidden storage. It’s the kind of detail that defines this garden: practical, yes, but crafted with a sense of elegance and ease.

Above, trailing jasmine spills over trellises and softens the structural lines of the terrace with scent and movement. To the rear, a secondary terrace sits shaded beneath four parasol Morus alba, providing a dappled retreat on hot days and adding an architectural rhythm to the garden’s flow.

The lawn itself is wide and lush — not simply a transition space, but a central element. It invites picnics, play, and barefoot walks from one end of the garden to the other. Along the edges, powder-coated fibreglass planters bring structure and colour, anchoring the planting and adding visual interest throughout the year.

This is a garden where form meets function in the most beautiful of ways. Calm, clean, and quietly luxurious, The Lawn Lounge is a space designed for real life — for slow mornings, scented evenings, and everything in between.

In the heart of historic Bath, behind the honeyed stone facades of Prior Park Buildings, a once-forgotten courtyard has blossomed into a secluded garden escape — a space defined by texture, intimacy, and the careful collision of order and overgrowth.

What began as a dull, unloved outdoor area is now a richly layered garden, alive with climbers, containers, and perennials in full, expressive bloom. Raised beds were crafted to honour the local architectural vernacular, while generously sized pots and troughs bring greenery to eye level, softening the rigid boundaries of walls and paving. Atop the utility structure, a green bin roof quietly supports pollinators and contributes to the lushness that now defines the space.

Evergreen jasmine and vigorous wisteria lead the charge up the walls, their twisting stems and fragrant blooms bringing structure and scent. In between, hydrangeas swell with colour, while erigeron spills from cracks and crevices, giving a feeling of natural abundance. Geranium ‘Rozanne’ weaves through the scene with its signature violet-blue flowers, stitching the space together in a wash of soft continuity.

A Japanese maple and tree ferns add vertical interest and dappled shade, while pittosporum and other shade-tolerant evergreens anchor the design. Terracotta pots, aged to perfection, cluster like a still life on the edges of the terrace — each one part of the narrative of time, care, and the slow magic of growing things.

In this garden, there’s a sense that nature is not being tamed, but welcomed — allowed to weave its way through every crevice, encouraged to settle and stay. The result is a true city retreat: a hidden, heartfelt tangle of petals, pots, and possibility.

This garden doesn’t ask you to choose between stillness and celebration — it invites both, effortlessly. Summer Oasis is exactly that: a multi-sensory terrace garden designed to host laughter, solitude, reflection, and delight — sometimes all in a single evening.

Set on a large decked terrace built entirely from reclaimed timber boards and aged oak beams, the garden flows between spaces: from the outdoor bar where a pizza oven glows warmly, to the sunken firepit where evenings linger long into the night. At the far end, under softly billowing netted sails supported by eucalyptus poles, bespoke lounge chairs invite an afternoon doze or quiet conversation.

Field maples and pinus trees flank the garden, adding structure and softness. Beneath them, climbers spill down walls — Californian lilac, star jasmine, and the richly scented chocolate vine — creating vertical rivers of green. The hot tub, discreetly nestled beneath wisteria and blush roses, becomes a cocoon of comfort, perfectly placed for stargazing.

A long tressil dining table stretches down one side of the terrace, ready for alfresco dinners and spontaneous gatherings. Every material choice speaks of age and purpose — a garden built not just to impress, but to last.

Beyond the terrace, a rewilded meadow begins — untamed and low-slung, it meanders gently into the horizon, blurring the lines between designed space and natural landscape. Here, as the sun dips low and the shadows lengthen, time seems to slow. The Summer Oasis becomes what all great gardens strive to be — a place where every hour feels well spent.