Work with walls
The dominant walls of the garden above are both a joy and a pain. On the plus side, the garden is likely to be sheltered from the elements and the walls will retain the warmth of the sun, widening the palette of plants that you can deploy. On the minus side, though, the walls are the predominant feature and the garden is overlooked.
The design has used the warm tone of the walls, with corten steel, rocks and natural-coloured furnishing softening the overall effect and pulling the design together. The eye is drawn into the garden rather than out towards the walls. The planting is still relatively immature here, but as the trees grow and the plants knit together, the walls and garden will meld into a softly contemporary scheme that will be hard to tire of. The chairs in the foreground invite you out and would make a lovely spot for morning coffee or pre-dinner drinks in the soft evening light.
Try at home
1 Minimise your palette if you have a lot going on around the edges of your garden. Pick a tone or material and work with that by layering up tonal colours in the same way you would when decorating a room.
2 Create a focal point to draw the eye down and into the garden. The sofa set at the end of the garden pulls the eye towards it rather than to the window above.
3 Plant appropriately. The walls cast shade and their textured surface looks wonderful with the bold, leafy ferns.
4 Work with your levels, your garden will be all the more interesting and feel larger.