GARDEN DESIGN CASE STUDY

A DIVERSE CITY GARDEN

Our construction teams work with a range of other inspirational designers. A recent project in Highbury, London, saw our Soft Landscaping team collaborate with the J & L Gibbons designers to bring about a stunning city garden.

A Diverse City Garden - Nicholsons Garden Design

A word from the designer –  Johanna Gibbons RDI

The garden is designed for biodiversity, in layers of seasonal interest, form and planting structure. South facing terraces grow herbs, each one designed around a specimen native shrub that in time will grow out over the balustrade seemingly as an extension of the surrounding gardens; guelder rose Viburnum opulus ‘Rosea’ with a compact form of olive Olea europea on the higher level; spindle Euonymus europeaus Red Cascade with bay Laurus nobilis and prostrate rosemary Romarinus officinalis Prostatus on the lower terrace balcony.

Downpipes are disconnected so the front garden performs as bio-retention. This follows best practice SuDS principles, with rainfall collected in a wall mounted tank overflowing to the planting with an overflow to the sewer. This is to collect and recycle precious rainwater while providing for the trees and plants that benefit from the bio-retention, rather than treating water as waste. Even with a London clay subsoil in the extreme storm events of February this year, the system did not overflow, or show any signs of stress. Paving is grit jointed for maximum porosity and excess facing bricks were crushed and laid as mulch that in due course will grow into a mossy bed. The swale is planted with stinking iris Iris feotidissima, wood spurge Euphorbia robbiae and witchhazel Hamamelis x media Arnold’s Promise, with clumps of coneflower Rudbeckia laciniate ‘Herbstsonne’ that will emerge with tall daisy flowers in the summer. Climbing Hydrangea Hydrangea petiolaris back and front will eventually create self-clinging and summer flowering greenwalls, and honeysuckles climb up the downpipes.

It is the trees however that at this time of year give the planting its structure and stature. An aerial hedge to create a green diaphanous screen to the kitchen from the street is planted of crabapple Malus perpetu ‘Everest’ that flowers profusely in spring and provides for urban bee pollination, underplanted with beech Fagus sylvatica. White willows anchors front and back so that dining is as if in a forest of Salix Alba Liempde, a willow with a narrow, pyramidal form displaying elegant catkins in the spring and fine silver foliage that turns butter yellow in the autumn. The end of terrace elegant elevation is thereby framed by trees that catch the wind and the early morning and evening light. High up there is a swift nesting box and just below a blind window where a ghost sign painted in white on the brickwork speaks to the street saying, ‘PLANT TREES’.

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Nicholsons is accredited by the following official organisations:

Approved contractors of the Safe-contractor scheme, Nicholsons are also accredited with CHAS and Arboricultural Association. The Company are also members of BALI and recently won awards as Cherwell Employer of the year 2016, Cherwell Established Business of the Year 2014, as well as being finalists in the Oxfordshire Business of the Year awards in 2013 (Energy and Environment Award).