One size fits all
Designers Harriet Farlam and Ben Chandler pack a lot into a tiny space fit for entertaining, dining, relaxing and working
You move into a new house with a tiny plot, so you call in a designer to help with the garden. But what if you and your partner work both together in a landscape business? Does this make the problem of turning a small space into a multi-functional area any easier?
Not so, according to designers Harriet Farlam and Ben Chandler.
“We questioned too much, explored too many possibilities, then threw the whole lot out of the window,” Harriet explains. “We usually follow a brief, do a survey and make a plan, but in our own garden we just had a long list of needs, including somewhere to eat every meal, together or with friends and family – the house is small, so the garden is our entertaining space, dining room and workshop. The design is built around function.”
There’s a nod to the seaside location. You walk over an oak deck, through a sunken boardwalk bordered by beds packed full of flowers, and under a fig arch, then step up between shaggy, low box hedges (blight-resistant Buxus microphylla ‘ Faulkner’) to a shingled, beach-like eating space with a shell and limestone floor (specially mixed by the Allgreen Group). This section is walled with pleached crab apple panels ( Malus ‘Evereste’) and dotted with Mediterranean aromatic plants.
This backs on to a working area, partially screened by a chestnut pole fence and home to a Gabriel Ash cedar greenhouse-cum-storage shed: “It had to look good, because it’s our view from the house.” The whole is contained in a 1.8m-high, willow basket fence by
Jay Davey, sparsely clothed with paleyellow Trachelospermum jasminoides
Star of Toscana (= ‘Selbra’) and climbing roses R. Snow Goose (= ‘Auspom’) and
R. ‘New Dawn’ – a sheltered, private space where sparrows balance on allium heads and plants enjoy the mild, estuarine climate, revelling in the fabled blood, fish and bone-enriched soil of these fishermen’s yards just two minutes’ walk from the harbour.
“We wanted the planting to be dreamy, filmy and transparent, reminiscent of the sea as you wander through it,” explains Harriet. “The colours change from moody magenta to punchy wine reds with Aquilegia vulgaris var. stellata ‘Ruby Port’, Thalictrum ‘Black Stockings’, Lysimachia atropurpurea ‘Beaujolais’ and Digitalis ferruginea topped with umbels of Valeriana officinalis, and the massive fig trees with their lime-washed trunks add a womb-like quality.”
The garden has enhanced the couple’s lives no end. “First thing in the morning, we can walk straight out into the garden; last thing in the evening, I’m out there, taking it all in,” says Ben. Harriet loves the balance of space and privacy and of formality and wildness, and can be found in the greenhouse with the light on late at night, propagating plants to the sound of BBC Radio 3. In this space, all is right with the world.
WE USUALLY FOLLOW A BRIEF, DO A SURVEY AND MAKE A PLAN, BUT IN OUR OWN GARDEN WE JUST HAD A LONG LIST OF NEEDS