“The beauty of small, city gardens is that you can design it like a room," explains Charlotte, one half of the dynamic design duo, Buchanan Studio. “You track the sun, you lay out how you're going to use it, and then you make out a wish list, just like you would in a house," says the other half, Angus.
It's no wonder the Buchanans approached their small, city garden like an interior, having had such roaring success as an interior design studio across interiors, events, fashion and product design. Named in House & Garden's Top 100 list for the last two years, the atelier is known for its fusion of functionality and fun, where their utility and flair result in moments of design genius, like a lobster headboard and breast-adorned bathtub for artists Philip and Charlotte Colbert, or tile-adorned beach huts in their elegant and innovative London bathroom. And their first venture into garden design – having previously only “enhanced clients' outdoor spaces” – had similarly enchanting results.
Despite the garden requiring a lot of maintenance (something Angus has taken on with green-fingered gusto), both Angus and Charlotte insist that designing a small garden shouldn't be an impossible venture with predictable features: “Don't just look at what you've got and feel deflated. Think about what you want and see if you can get elements of it." For the couple, who have two young children and a taste for countryside living, the priorities were: “having a small area to grow vegetables, somewhere for the children to be able to muck about and get muddy, somewhere to eat and cook, and somewhere to sunbathe.” And, like most urban dwellers, they wanted to do it in as much privacy as possible. “You don't need to get overwhelmed, and you don't need to be an expert,” reassures Charlotte.
“Part of the reason for getting this house was the garden. Not just for me to exercise my green fingers, but for the children and dog to run around in," says Angus, “though it's not that big, it really was the clincher for us.” When they first moved in, however, they couldn't see the back of the garden, so dense were the brambles and Japanese knotweed. Despite the herbaceous hindrances, the rare opportunity to start totally from scratch was an exciting one.
Then came the rigorous planning – although Angus admits to occasionally being taken in by exciting things at the garden centre. Always original, the couple swerved the terraced London house stereotype of a ‘hard half’ at the front of the garden and a ‘grass half’ at the back, which often ends up neglected and overgrown. “A lot of thought went into how to carve up the ratios between hard surfaces, grass and beds. We chose to keep the middle section grass, creating a loop around in stone that allows the kids to swing around on their bikes." And the garden room at the back of the garden – which is a carefully adorned lean-to with nifty roll-down canvas sides – means they use the entire space. “We cut a path and a route through which means we have to use the whole thing,” they say.
Just like the start of an indoor renovation project, the work began with the foundations. As soon as they were sure trees wouldn't get damaged they invested in large screening trees that would grow during building work, as well as fast-growing bamboo and fences with rambling roses dotted throughout. This way they could ensure that the garden would have time to bed in and grow out.
Also essential to the Buchanans' plans was creating a relationship between their interior and exterior lives, where ease and flow were a major priority. Their plans removed the segregation and hierarchisation of ‘indoor’ and ‘outdoor’ spaces, where furniture and activities can move freely from the dining room to the garden and into the garden room. They knew that everything to enhance their al fresco living arrangement had to be easily on hand, which was facilitated by their covered lean-to. “Everyone likes eating dinner outside on a warm summer's night, but if it involves putting out a trestle table, pulling chairs from around the house and digging through the shed…it's just not going to happen,” they say.
Angus explains that a childhood spent outdoors with a “blurred line” between what belonged inside and out was the inspiration for the project. As such, the pair have a “relaxed approach” to making their outdoor space “perform and function like any other room” regardless of the typically British inclement weather. Their new range of high-performing outdoor furniture is designed to flourish in rain or shine, putting to bed the indoor versus outdoor binary. By creating a designated cooking and dining area outside, the couple can cook over a fire every night in the summer, host cosy candle-lit dinner parties in mid-winter and achieve a slice of the rural life they sometimes dream of.
The dialogue between indoors and outdoors is further nurtured by using warm and interesting lighting, which Angus underlines as a non-negotiable. From uplighting apple trees adorned with roses to adding little lights on pathways, leading the eye down the garden, soft focus lights can draw the eye (and body) outside and into nature.
Angus hopes to create more “pockets of interest” in every season and avoid the desolate winter months by adding evergreen plants. But spring and summer see the garden peacocking to life with no difficulty, and their “eccentric English” aesthetic of rambling roses, a vegetable patch of courgettes, tomatoes and “tiny fairy alpine strawberries” perfectly reflects their romantic design style.
Buchanan Studio: buchanan.studio
