GIFTS FOR ALL SEASONS With its clever layout and exquisite planting, this modern Buckinghamshire garden delights the senses all year round
Cleverly crafted planting schemes produce an evolving picture throughout the year in this modern country garden in Buckinghamshire
Surrounded by the stunningly beautiful Buckinghamshire countryside, the garden at the Gate House celebrates the natural cycle of the seasons, with each month offering an evolving kaleidoscope of plants designed to delight the senses. Landscape architect Stefano Marinaz’s inspiration for this family garden near Gerrards Cross was the rare heathland and pine woods that bleed into the property to the rear and stretch out beyond its boundaries on all sides. He also took his cue from the architecture of the buildings, creating a connection between the early 20th-century house and its sleek new cedar-clad extension.
‘The owner contacted me when work had begun on the extension and he wanted a new design to complement it,’ explains Stefano. ‘It was good timing, because the first thing I decided to do was to move the car park from in front of the house to the side, which we tagged on to the extension build.’ The front garden was originally laid to lawn and the owners were keen to keep some grass, but were otherwise open to ideas. While this gave Stefano the artistic freedom to do as he pleased, his instinct was to create a design that would complement the natural landscape. ‘I decided to use a palette of seasonal bulbs and perennials in the courtyard in front of the extension, with structure supplied by pleached crab apples,’ he says. ‘These partly mask the building as you enter the property, revealing the planting and the house gradually as you walk up the path.’ To increase biodiversity yet still offer a sward of grass, Stefano designed a perennial wildflower meadow that greets visitors with a sea of blooms in spring and summer. ‘After the meadow is cut in late summer, it just looks like a lawn for half the year,’ he explains. ‘But as summer approaches it explodes with flowers and draws in bees and butterflies that animate the space, bringing it to life.’ In addition to the meadow, he has also edged the property with a wildlife-friendly hornbeam hedge.
Stefano replaced the wooden fence that divided the front and back gardens with a set of yew hedges clipped into playful wave-like shapes, an idea →
inspired by the garden of the famous Dutch plantsman Piet Oudolf. A grass path meanders through the hedges and opens up to reveal a large lawn behind the house, which provides space for the client’s three children to play.
Beyond the lawn lies a couple of acres of natural heathland and pine forest. Here, Stefano has mown paths through the trees and augmented the existing grasses, ferns and rhododendrons with climbing roses, spring bulbs and witch hazel – with its colourful, fragrant winter flowers – to increase the interest throughout the year.
The planting in front of the house was chosen to complement the white building and Japanese-style burnt sugi-board (carbonised cedar) cladding on the extension. Stefano says: ‘Many of the bulbs are white or black to pick up these colours, and include snowdrops in February and March, followed by the tulips ‘Angel’s Wish’ and ‘Queen of Night’. Then come the white alliums (‘Mount Everest’ and allium nigrum) and black-flowered Iris chrysographes in late May, with white cyclamen following on in autumn. The late summer-flowering perennial Actaea simplex Atropurpurea Group and shrubby black elder, Sambucus nigra f. porphyrophylla ‘Eva’ (syn. ‘Black lace’), sport both dark foliage and white flowers, offering two for one in this duotone scheme.
Year-round interest isn’t forgotten closer to the house either. ‘I’ve used combinations of dogwoods (Cornus sanguinea ‘Midwinter Fire’), hellebores and daphnes, which have fragrant winter flowers, in the large pots on either side of the front door to introduce some permanent colour and texture,’ says Stefano.
Despite the seemingly complex planting design, the front garden needs very little maintenance.
The pleached crab trees just require an annual prune in late winter, and the perennials in the courtyard are cut back at about the same time.
The meadow is mown once a year in late summer, after the flowers have gone to seed, and the cuttings are then removed a few days later and composted. The result is an easy-care, modern garden that the owners love for its panorama of plants that deliver surprises for 12 months of the year.
“I LOVE THE PLANTS IN THE COURTYARD, STARTING IN SPRING WITH TINY BULBS AND ENDING AS THE SUMMER FLOWERS TURN INTO BRONZE SEED HEADS OVER WINTER”