A SEASIDE JEWEL
RHS award-winning designer Jo Thompson on how she created a coastal garden perfectly in fitting with its Camber Sands location
When leading garden designer Jo Thompson was invited to create a new beach-side garden at Camber Sands in East Sussex, she devised a stunning scheme that blends a sense of privacy with dazzling sea views
‘I drew inspiration
from the landscape of sand dunes that surrounds this
garden’
Given its fabulous location by the sea at Camber Sands in East Sussex, this Sea Gem garden had to look good from every angle. From the beach looking inland, from the living area looking out to sea, and from the top floor of the house where a study area in a glass box perched on the roof. Yet privacy was required from the beach on which this new-build home, designed by architects HMY, is situated, without compromising the awe-inspiring views out to sea.
The house had yet to be built and was at design stage when the leading garden designer, Jo Thompson, came on board. ‘It was wonderful to be involved at this early stage as the architects and I could have a meaningful conversation, collaborating to make the final house and garden appear as a whole,’ she says.
SUPERB SEASCAPE
When she assessed the context, what stood out was the enormity of the coastal landscape. The tide brings the waves right up to the house, then pushes them almost a kilometre away, leaving a seascape of ever-changing tidal bars – lines of sand and lines of water. There was the openness of the site – it is visible to everyone who visits this popular seaside destination, and the winds were relentless. ‘When I first visited the site, I asked the client which way the wind came from. He laughed and replied, “Everywhere!”.’ The key issue was that of privacy – how to create some sense of seclusion in a garden that is entirely visible from the outside, without destroying the view from inside the house and the amazing views beyond. Says Jo: ‘I decided to do this by referring to the landscape of sand dunes that surrounds this garden. We made sand dunes within the garden, behind the notional fence boundary, and created a sunken entertaining area within. This way, at first sight nothing apart from the house itself appears to onlookers.’
INSPIRED BY DUNES
Taking its cues from the curves of the yet-to-be-built house, Jo chose an undulating cedar boardwalk to lead through two ‘dune’ areas onto
the beach itself and to the sunken, elliptical entertaining area, invisible from the beach. Here, a rendered blockwork seat curves round a fire-pit and provides shelter from the wind as well as privacy from curious passers-by. Grassy leymus and fescues have been planted to colonise the area and marram grass has made itself at home and knitted together the newly formed sand dunes. Timber bollard lights and marine-grade steel foot-washing stations make the owners’ life a little easier.
The zone is held in by a boundary inspired by the sand retention system visible beyond – the timber uprights of the new sea defence were linked with rope commissioned from Chatham Dockyard. While oak groynes inspired by those found on the beach below mark the entrance, a master carver etched the house name into the wood. ‘The garden needed to have a feeling of movement, of changeability, of not being completely restricted. I study the landscape and celebrate the context wherever I make a garden,’ comments Jo. For more on this garden, see seagemcamber.co.uk.