SEA CHANGE This perfectly formed garden is in the most unexpected setting
Hidden inside a Royal Navy Dockyard, this garden is a series of small but perfectly formed rooms befitting the Georgian house to which it belongs
Cross the bridge to the Isle of Sheppey on the Kent coast and drive through flat marshland to Sheerness. Here in this town of cranes, ships and faded seaside holiday memories are the remnants of the old Royal Navy Dockyard, including a terrace of Georgian houses built during the Napoleonic Wars. The unique character of this place – an exciting clash of historical and industrial – attracted architect Rupert Wheeler and others from the Spitalfields Trust, a building conservation charity. They rescued the terrace from a developer in 2011, and Rupert chose the middle house as his weekend home, doing it up over a number of years.
When it came to creating the garden, however, things weren’t quite so straightforward. ‘The houses had nice big gardens, because they were built for officers of the Royal Navy,’ Rupert explains, ‘but they had been turned into a large, open lorry park.’
Another issue was the site’s exposed coastal location. ‘There’s a high brick wall around all the gardens, so that offers some shelter, but the salty air doesn’t suit many plants.’ However, the main thing that had Rupert stumped was the dimensions – an extremely long and narrow 60 by 12 metres.
He called on his former neighbour Paul Gazerwitz, an award-winning garden designer, and asked for a design to resemble a stately home enfilade, with rooms opening onto each other. ‘The idea was to have a formal garden near the house, responding to the Georgian architecture, but then, as you progress through, it becomes looser in character,’ says Paul.
Outside the back door is a seating area where Rupert and his family enjoy breakfast in the sun. Steps lead down to a Mediterranean-style courtyard, with beds of rosemary, sage and lavender. The standout feature, however, is the canopy of six crab apple trees under which is a gravel court where the family play pétanque when the weather is good.
The next, densely planted area offers a visual break between the courtyard and the large oval lawn further down. ‘This magical, abundant planting acts as a buffer between the two,’ says Paul. He chose reliable plants he knew could manage the coastal conditions: Salvia ‘Caradonna’, Perovskia ‘Blue Spire’ and Geranium ‘Patricia’, as well as the eye-catching white blooms of Romneya coulteri.
Clipped yew columns edge the planting, snaking along the lawn to connect the areas. ‘The flowing shape leads your eye and you get different perspectives as you walk down,’ Paul explains.
That journey ends at the bottom of the plot, where Rupert has converted a collection of shipping containers into a summerhouse, with a deck and hot tub. ‘We used the containers for storage when we were doing up the house,’ he says. ‘They’re a nice allusion to the dockyard.’
The garden was planted three years ago and has matured quickly. ‘It’s a fairly robust planting scheme,’ says Rupert. ‘And at the weekends it is a pleasure to look after it ourselves.’
GARDEN GUIDE
ORIENTATION South facing.
SOIL TYPE London clay.
SPECIAL FEATURES Long narrow garden of distinct areas, from Mediterranean courtyard to naturalistic planting and open lawn.
GARDEN DESIGN Paul Gazerwitz of del Buono Gazerwitz, delbuono-gazerwitz.co.uk.