Herb-Filled Sunny Front Garden
Forest Hill, London
The brief was to make this large front garden feel like one garden to reflect the double fronted nature of the handsome 1920s house it adjoins rather than the previous situation where the driveway was on one side, with a lawn on the other. The design also had to make sense of the varying levels in the garden, and to provide storage for the bins. The site has a dual slope and previously had a block paved driveway with many awkward humps and dips. Rather than walking around planting and across the driveway a new clay paver path now leads directly to the front door. Climbing plants clad the side wall to add further green to the driveway side of the garden along with planting strips with shade loving ground cover plants to sit under the car when it is parked, and sun loving ground cover planting strips to the sides of the parking space. The bins, which were previously stored openly on the driveway are relocated to the front boundary with the rear of the bin store forming a planter that also acts as the street boundary wall. The bin store and planter are bespoke and were designed in detail by CRGD and carefully constructed by reusing the bricks from the previous front garden wall. The planting beds on this side of the garden are stepped around a plinth for a (still to be decided on!) feature with herbs heavily featuring in the planting palette of this sunny garden to provide scent and year round structure. Importantly, most of the clay pavers and all of the gravel on retention grid were designed and specified in detail to provide SUDS compliant hard landscaping. It’s so important, as well as being a legal requirement for front gardens, to allow rainwater to be retained on site rather than have it run off and overload London’s struggling sewer system.
‘We approached Catriona to design our front drive having previously worked with her successfully as architect on our loft and rear extension projects. We wanted someone who had good 3D and construction skills to deal with the complex levels involved. Catriona managed our expectations and laid out the process very clearly. The collaborative revision of layouts and planting , as well as bringing hard landscaping samples to discuss, worked really well to take on board our needs and desires. The important successes for us are that the parking area now looks like part of the garden, that the bin store is attractive, and that the hard landscaping is flexible enough to accommodate movement. We also appreciate the fact that you chose all of the plants and sourced such reliable plants as we don’t know much about plants! The front of the house is the first thing you see when you get home so having a beautiful garden there sets you up for your return home - the garden really makes our home feel complete. Our kids also love the paving strips - they now jump along from strip to strip to get in an out.’
