SIMPLY STUNNING
Inspired by the modernist-style of the house that sits within it, this beautiful garden, with its prairie planting rich seasonal colours, comes into its own in autumn
Adam Robinson-quick describes his former home in Chalfont St Peter in Buckinghamshire as ‘an upside-down house’. And it was this that informed his approach to the garden design – his starting point being the views over the half-acre plot from the first-floor living room and the deck. Built by a Canadian architect in the 1970s, the house has a distinctly North American feel. ‘We played on that,’ says Adam, ‘both in our renovations and in the garden design.’
Now, the building sits happily within a garden of perennial and prairie planting that conjures up a sense of the American mid-west.
Adam, his husband Stephen and their twin daughters moved to the property in 2015, attracted by its modernist style. They wanted a home where they could entertain friends, both indoors and out, as well as a garden where their little girls (now aged nine) could play safely. ‘One of the advantages of looking down on the garden was that we could see the children wherever they were,’ says Adam.
A LAYERED APPROACH
Adam, a garden designer, relished the challenge of the sloping site. It was originally surrounded by a dense wall of leylandii that obscured the beech woods to one side and made the garden feel shut in. Once these were removed, he set about blending the garden with the backdrop, with the aim of making it appear like ‘a layer of the view beyond’. He surrounded the garden with beech hedging, planted beech pillars around the main lawn and wildflower meadow, and put trees back to replace the leylandii. More than 20 birches (Betula albosinensis ‘Hergest’) were introduced with the purpose of connecting with what lies beyond the garden. For instance, rather than blocking the view of a new development of houses, several birches hide the garages but direct the eye towards the line of red roofs. Three types of cornus are woven through the garden. These ‘hard workers’ are lovely in spring and summer, with intense and different stem colours for winter interest: Cornus alba ‘Sibirica’ (dark red); C. sericea ‘Flaviramea’ (yellowy green); and
C. sanguinea ‘Winter Beauty’ (fiery orange).
SEASONAL DISPLAYS
The house itself is built on a shelf, with a gentle valley running through the site. ‘There’s no water here, but somehow you feel as though you are by a river,’ says Adam. To emphasise this impression, he built cedar decks projecting like jetties from the house, and planted a line of tall Calamagrostis x acutiflora ‘Karl Foerster’ along one side of the lawn. With its decks and balconies, the house is sharply geometric, but this is offset by the softness of Adam’s planting. His palette throughout the garden consists chiefly of perennials and evergreen and deciduous grasses. These work well throughout the year and particularly in autumn, when the grass seedheads are backlit by low sunshine – and they’re easy to look after, needing little more than deadheading and an annual cutdown.
A sloping bank has a prairie-style border, with tall echinacea, rudbeckia, sanguisorba, Persicaria amplexicaulis ‘Taurus’ and verbena blending in with grasses such as Miscanthus sinensis ‘Grosse Fontäne’ and Stipa gigantea. This border, rising to the sun terrace, is retained by gabions to give further height to the planting when seen from the lower dining deck. Architectural planting in a triangular bed is level with the table. The sumac, Rhus typhina ‘Tiger Eyes’, with its lime-green foliage, was matched with the deciduous Pennisetum alopecuroides ‘Hameln’, the feathery evergreen Stipa tenuissima, and the shorter cultivar, Verbena bonariensis ‘Lollipop’.
The bed that curves round the lawn is a rich mix of grasses and perennials, including perovskia, Geranium Patricia ‘Brempat’
The TERRACE is the perfect place for watching the late SUN moving across the GARDEN
(which lasts right through the autumn), Salvia nemorosa ‘Caradonna’, dark-centred Euphorbia characias ‘Black Pearl’, Anemanthele lessoniana, evergreen Geum ‘Totally Tangerine’ (good for strong, early colour), and Verbena bonariensis. Low yew hedging divides this bed from the lawn, making a crisp contrast, says Adam, with ‘the gauzy messiness of the perennials and grasses’.
A PLACE TO SIT
The bank border rises up to the gravelled sun terrace with a fire pit and Acapulco chairs. Sheltered by a neighbour’s sycamore tree, it’s cool at mid-day, while, in the evening, it’s the perfect place for watching the late sun moving across the garden. This spot is more shady than elsewhere and so there are evergreen ferns, such as hart’s tongue and deer ferns, and the grass Luzula nivea (one of Adam’s favourite plants), box and the holly oak tree, Quercus ilex.
Astrantias give spikes of colour in the dappled light.
The garden was carefully designed to draw visitors in. If you walk round the side of the house to the lower decking, the view of the lawn is half hidden by a Cornus alba ‘Sibirica’ and a row of box balls with a spray of grasses beyond. ‘You are forced into a smaller space before the view opens up,’ explains Adam. On the other side of the house, steps lead from the driveway to a circular lawn and a line of yew buttresses that create planting bays for a textural autumn border featuring roundels of Pittosporum tenuifolium ‘Pompom’, Eupatorium macranthum and Verbena bonariensis.
New owners now enjoy this rich and intricately planned garden, while the family has moved to the south coast. There, Adam is working his magic again, this time using plants that can cope with salt spray and fierce winds. No doubt, the result will be another triumph. HB
To find out more about Adam’s garden design, visit his website at arqgardendesign.co.uk