Large, family garden designed for play and recreation, defined by a huge lawn split into two levels and a large terrace for dining and entertainment.

Big gardens can either celebrate a sense of openness and scale or create interest and discovery with a series of smaller compositions or rooms. This garden features a sweeping lawn area that provides both central access to parts of the garden and an air of elegance to the scheme. The project entailed extensive excavation, with the entire lawn area lowered by 300 mm. The raised beds on the side were pushed back to maximise the lawn coverage. These works represented large excavation and clearance work of existing walls and footing.

Large lawn requested by the client to create large play area for the children taking in interest in various sport activities.

The expansive outdoors space supports an active lifestyle, with a play zone at the rear of the garden featuring a badminton and tennis court and a bespoke tennis wall.

Truly functional, the garden also has a large paved terrace, with seating and dining areas and a bespoke built-in kitchen unit. The terrace is dramatically bracketed by two living green walls on either side, each 2m high and approximately 10m long. The green walls screen existing fencing and provide as much greenery as possible requested by the client creating really decorative and interesting focal points on both sides of the terrace.

A handsome, new, stone-clad retaining wall with stone copings was built, reaching up to two meters in height and topped by two-meter yew hedging that cleverly disguises an air-conditioning unit. New fencing also was added to the left-hand side of the garden. Large Air Condition units are disguised behind tall evergreen hedge at the back of the garden with access through bespoke doors in horizontal slatted design fitted to the rear wall providing contrast detail and texture as well as nice focal point at the back of the garden.

The large Japanese acre tree by the tennis court is a focal point, especially in autumn. The garden design also features pockets of beautiful mixed planting, especially opposite the play area, and palm and pleached trees. Evergreen climbers of Trachelospermum jasminoides soften and disguise the retaining wall by the tennis court and combined with the 2m high hedge above the wall plus the 6-7m high conifer plants at the back of the garden create a wall of greenery desired by the client.

At night, strategic garden lighting illuminates the huge outdoors space and creates an inviting atmosphere for entertainment and relaxation. Garden lighting design has been divided into various circuits to allow control of the lighting in different parts of the garden as required.