About This Project

This was an unusual and interesting design project for me. The clients had recently moved into an historic, listed property and they were keen to bring its overgrown and neglected garden back to life. They wanted to create a beautiful walled garden, appropriate to the property, and to make use of the walls for growing espaliered and cordon fruit and David Austin roses. They also wanted to create a productive kitchen garden.

There was just one other minor detail…. the brief also called for a steam-powered model railway that would run around the garden! Having previously built a 1/3-sized, ride-on steam railway at their former property, I didn’t doubt their capability to construct a miniature version here. However, the project presented me with a considerable design problem: how to resolve the various conflicting requirements and get the best use out of the space.

My first task was to soften the harsh disjunction created by the fact that the garden was laid out on a slightly different axis to the house. I solved this awkwardness by creating an initial paved ‘landing’ area, surrounded by generous planting and rose arches that would absorb the change of angles as the path curved away. 

Two large raised vegetable beds were constructed in the kitchen garden area, laid across the narrow garden to increase the sense of width here. The wall on the sunnier side of the garden was given over entirely to fruit. A lean-to greenhouse was installed against the rear brick wall, with space allotted for composting and a water butt.

The path of the railway ran the length of the garden, through both the shed and the greenhouse, and around a large, raised rockery area at the end of the garden, with plenty of scope for constructing interesting ‘scenery’.