Contemporary gardens

Keen to create a garden worthy of their recently renovated house in west London, Australian expats James and Olivia Markham enlisted the help of Sheila Jack. She has combined a clever planting palette featuring a mix of foliage with curved motifs that echo the interiors

Tommaso del Buono has created a cool, calm and contemporary garden for a Tuscan villa, maximising the spectacular setting with diverse, drought-tolerant planting and inviting areas for outdoor living.

When landscape architect Stefano Marinaz saw this Essex garden for the first time, it was little more than a patch of lawn. Now, a sea of perennial planting and subtle structural elements have created a suitably naturalistic setting for the 18th-century barn conversion

In an extract from his new book The Gardens of Ulf Nordfjell, the landscape architect reveals how he created a scheme to suit the unique conditions of this stretch of the Baltic coastline

With its borders of tall ornamental grasses, roses and perennials, formal box parterres and a central reflecting pool, this Suffolk garden is an elegant testament to designer Frederic Whyte's ability to balance formality and order with naturalistic beauty.

Captivated by the setting of this farmhouse garden in Virginia, Luciano Giubbilei has overseen the creation of a prairie-style scheme in which native and non-native perennials and grasses blend for a sustainable and yet perfectly painterly effect

Welcoming the challenge of designing a garden for a thatched newbuild in the Cotswolds, Marcus Barnett created a series of terraces and paths that complement the undulating planting and carefully selected trees

On the slopes of the Tiétar Valley in central Spain, designer Álvaro Sampedro’s own garden is a beautiful embodiment of his sustainable approach, with hardy Mediterranean planting and sinuous paths mirroring the landscape beyond

This former farm near Toledo in Spain is a testament to landscape designer Fernando Martos’ belief that a garden should work in perfect harmony with its surroundings

Creating a music studio within the plot of a London house left its garden a building site, but designer Non Morris’s skilful layered planting has transformed bare earth and walls into a lush, secluded space.

Tantalising vistas draw you in all directions in this Chiltern Hills garden, where Gavin McWilliam and Andrew Wilson have used walls, apertures and clever planting to transform a disjointed plot into a series of interconnected spaces

Garden designer Jinny Blom turned to giants ferns and tropical colour to create this dense, secluded hideaway in the heart of London

With its strong, simple planting schemes thriving within a network of water channels, this transformation of a Provençal farmyard is testament to garden designer James Basson’s ability to blend his ecological approach with the owner’s love of modernist principles

Complementing the sleek lines of a contemporary house in rural Cambridgeshire, Colm Joseph has created a planting scheme that ebbs and flows around distinctive limestone and steel elements

After creating an enchanting festival show garden at RHS Hampton Court Palace, Alexandra Noble was commissioned to re-create the design in west London, complete with secret spaces, winding paths and magical, gossamer-fine planting

A restful palette was a priority for The White Company’s founder Chrissie Rucker in the design of the immaculate garden of her house in Buckinghamshire, which is filled with perennials and grasses in shades of white and green

In her own London garden, landscape designer Emily Erlam has constructed a series of elegant terraces, each with its own mood, which provide structure for Mediterranean plantings and natural canopies

Garden designer Butter Wakefield was asked to remodel the garden and roof terrace of this Chelsea townhouse to provide year-round structure and interest. She explains to Clare Foster how she has created natural spaces that complement and flow seamlessly out from a new extension