David Hadley explains the design process in this video walkthrough of a garden featured on ITV’s ‘Love Your Garden’ with Alan Titchmarsh.
Video Transcript
Here is a garden we built a couple of years ago in Altrincham. So we’ve got some pictures of what the garden looked like before we started. The customer had inherited quite a shabby garden. There was a timber retaining wall, which was rotten. No real patio to sit on and a horrible decking area, which was collapsing into an old pond.
It really was a bit dreary. These big plants here had grown far too big and so we ended up relocating those down at the bottom of the garden. The garden really didn’t match the house. The house was fantastic inside, and you can see it’s all a bit dreary in the garden.
Master Plan
So we took a full brief from the customer. It’s quite a challenging design because it’s on multiple levels. So we produced the following master plan, which shows the main patio here with the kitchen around it and dining area at the same level, with a glass balustrade to keep the wind off and steps down to another seating area, which was composite decking. Then there is paving past a water feature onto another seating area at the lower level.
So this plan has a lot of detail and enables the customer to understand what we’re doing. Also the guys on site are able to construct the detailed garden from the plans. But what we needed to do here is really get an understanding of what the finished garden would look like before we actually built it.
Visualisations
So we did some 3D visualisations which worked really well to explain what the space was going to look like, particularly with the different levels. So we have the outside kitchen at the upper level and the dining area steps down to a lower seating area, and then a path along past the water feature and onto another seating area to enjoy at different times of day.
You can even see the LED lights underneath the steps and an idea of what the planting will look like when it’s matured. You really get an understanding of how the black bricks work with the different colours of paving and the metal planters that we install throughout the garden.
Then this is a look down onto the lower seating area. So you really get a feel for what the garden would look like with the furniture on.
Completed Garden
So we then built the garden, which took us a few months. Here are the final results. We were very happy with it and the client was over the moon. They sorted their own furniture and had a really good eye for design detail. The furniture really complemented the space well.
You can see we’ve even got some cushions in store for this seating area and the water features running away. This is it at dusk so you can see you’ve got a light in the waterfall and some subtle lighting on the fence in the background.
This shows the lower seating area and the decking area with the lights underneath the steps. Then this is an aerial view with a drone. You can see the raised dining area which works really well. There’s enough room easily for eight people to sit around the table, which is a specific requirement of the client.
ITV’s Love Your Garden
So that was the finished result. And then I was contacted by a film company after they saw the garden on the website and they wanted to film it for an Alan Titchmarsh Love Your Garden Show. We had a great day of filming with Alan and the team. The idea is that Alan sought inspiration from the garden to help him design a garden for a couple in Burnley.
So it was a full day of filming with a very professional approach to it all, and it was really interesting to watch. So you can see this is Alan talking through the kitchen and how that all works. And I even had a picture at the end with Alan himself. So it was a great day.
Contact Us Today
If you’re thinking about your next project and would like to discuss your design ideas and options, get in touch with the team at Creative Gardens & Driveways today.
