STEP INTO THE WILD
The principles of traditional garden design will tell you to start by listing your demands from your plot: a shed, a dining zone, a barbecue area… the idea is to create an ‘outdoor room’ to extend your living space. Lock those requirements in first, the thinking goes, then move on to your planting scheme. But increasingly our demands are changing – rather than a functional utility space, we want to look out of the kitchen window and see a landscape – a living, thriving natural scene that is dynamic through the seasons. We want a place we can sit out in and feel immersed in and surrounded by nature.
In my own garden near Bath, I have recreated meadows, a naturalised pond and small coppice; I’ve allowed the surrounding landscape to creep in and inform the planting. That isn’t often possible in an urban setting where fenced-in gardens sit side by side and there’s little ‘landscape’ to speak
