family town garden

east sheen, london

Although created for a BBC series called ‘Small Town Gardens’ this was a very real project for me and I hope we will always make gardens like this.  I often seek inspiration from architecture and in this case it was the Stirling Prize nominated doctors surgery in Hammersmith which hides itself from the road behind arcing monolithic walls.

I used walls here to hide the shed and the jumble of outdoor toys that a young family inevitably accumulates in a garden, but also to act as a foil for planting and provide something to illuminate. The thundering child safe water feature disguised the noise of planes landing at Heathrow and by stepping down into the seating area and enveloping it with planting we managed to make this overlooked space feel surprisingly private.