A modern garden inspired by the textural planting of New Zealand

When the owners first saw a Sixties flat-roofed detached house near Winchester, set in the former kitchen garden of a manor, they were attracted by the chance to create a contemporary family house and garden influenced by modern houses they had seen in New Zealand. Point Seven, which is a collaboration with the architect Dan Brill, now has a red cedar-clad exterior with steel-framed windows and an open-plan interior comprising three distinct areas. The bedrooms are on the east side, the glass-walled, open-plan kitchen and dining room are in the centre, and the sitting room, entrance and garage form the west wing.

The original garden was traditional, with espaliered trees and climbers smothering the listed brick wall around the perimeter. With floor-to-ceiling windows to the main rooms, the garden would have to create all-seasons interest and provide each room with a degree of privacy, while not obscuring the wonderful backdrop of the old brick wall and the woodland canopy beyond.

For the designer Helen Elks-Smith, the owners made unusual clients in that they already understood the value of texture in a planting scheme and green as a dominant colour, and they were planning to do all the hard landscaping and planting themselves. They had an affinity for the native flora and gardens of New Zealand, where they had lived before, and Helen steered them towards the idea of mass planting, especially of grasses. She felt these would produce an informal scheme that would not detract from the strong architecture of the cedar-clad house.

The hard landscaping around the house mirrors the linearity of the building with, at the front, two generous basalt terraces and two geometric pools and, on the east side, two iroko decks. Helen wanted to connect the garden with the surrounding woodland and provide the relaxed look the owners wanted. To achieve this, she retained the woodland spillover in the south-east corner, which includes a stately copper beech and an Indian bean tree.

A network of beds, including three rectangular ones that break up the central lawn, are filled with grasses, perennials and mounding shrubs. These provide relaxed screens that separate different areas. Grasses in tones of buff, bronze, purple, russet and pink form a leitmotif across the garden. They range from cushions of Hakonechloa macra and Anemanthele lessoniana to the bold uprights of Calamagrostis x acutiflora ‘Karl Foerster’ and arching stems of Miscanthus sinensis ‘Starlight’ and Stipa gigantea. The sophisticated colour palette is in harmony with the warm tones of the brick wall and a mature Prunus serrula. Two Prunus maackii, chosen for their amber bark, are placed at the end of the garden, while a Betula albosinensis ‘Fascination’ creates a focal point at the entrance to the house.

An informal grassy pathway between borders leads from the house to the swimming pool and dining area on the east side. Here, Helen decided to retain the sloping profile of the soil between the raised swimming pool and the sunken decks outside the children’s bedrooms. In this area, mounding planting of Euphorbia mellifera, Choisya ternata, santolina, Salvia officinalis and Hylotelephium ‘Matrona’, with vertical accents from Acanthus spinosus, creates the organic look that the owners love. A gravel path weaves through these borders to the sheltered dining platform and beyond it to raised beds, in which salads, herbs and vegetables are grown.

This is a garden that will not stand still. Already some planting outside the kitchen has been removed because Helen felt it was ‘too linear’. A softer mix of sesleria, Molinia caerulea ‘Moorhexe’ and Digitalis parviflora has taken its place. In the borders around the lawn, Sanguisorba ‘Joni’ has replaced too prolific Verbena bonariensis. The relaxed look is the result of careful editing.

Elks-Smith Landscape & Garden Design: elks-smith.co.uk
Dan Brill Architects: danbrillarchitects.com