November Update

It’s been a while since we’ve done a recap of some of our current projects, so here goes!

In Farnborough we’re working with a client who is undertaking extensive modernisation and redevelopment of their home including the re-design of both front and back gardens. The back garden is a reasonable size, around 20m square, but throws up many of the issues of a sloping site as it rises by around 2m from the back door to the highest point (approximately East to West), and also falls by about 1m from one side to the other (North to South). The client was keen to include a hot-tub within the scheme, as well as a cooking/entertaining area for adults and a decent level-ish lawn space for children to play on. A simplified visualisation of our proposed scheme is shown below – planting will be taking place in mid November so we hope to be able to add some photos of the finished garden soon.

Sloping site in Farnborough with space for cooking, entertainment and play

At the same site we’re now moving forward with the front garden scheme – this is obviously going to be subject to the new planning regulations on driveways so we’ll be using a soakaway to deal with any surface runoff from the scheme.

In Runfold we’re working on a scheme for a property with around 2 acres of gardens. The client is adding 3 separate extensions to the property including a new kitchen, lounge and swimming pool. With 2 acres of garden there’s obviously plenty of scope to meet all of the family’s diverse requirements so we’re including a new tennis court, a large grass area for the children to play on, a small fruit garden, a sun-trap terrace just outside the pool, a more formal ‘adult’ garden and new garages with improved space for parking and turning. Thus far we’ve presented our initial proposal to the client and are preparing to move ahead with the more detailed design for the first tranche of construction work.

In Camberley we’re working with a client who had just had a new driveway installed, but the driveway contractors had no idea what to do with the remainder of the front garden. We’ve developed a proposal to add structure and interest to the front garden using a little hard landscaping enhanced with year-round interest from the low maintenance planting scheme. We’re currently scheduling the construction for the hard landscaping and the client is keen for this project to be complete by the end of the year.

In Rowledge the hard landscaping has been completed at the 5 acre site we’ve been working on for the last 18 months or so. The planting plans have been presented and approved but planting has been delayed to spring 2009 by a series of other events which have in turn meant that the deer fencing isn’t yet complete.

In Hook we’re working on a small family garden of around 200 square metres. The project has been put out to tender and the contractors have just returned their prices so we’re expecting the client to make an instruction shortly. This project should be constructed in early 2009.

In Frimley we’ve been instructed by a client who is about to purchase some additional land from their neighbour, adding a new strip of garden to the side of their existing plot. The client is also about to start construction of a new extension to the house, so the garden will need to be comprehensively revised to fit the new layout of the site.

As well as all of the above design work we’ve also been quite busy with the teaching side of the business, helping other designers get to grips with the CAD packages Vectorworks and SketchUp. These are professional tools that can provide massive productivity gains to the designer, especially on large or complex projects.

We’re now looking to the first quarter of 2009 for further commissions so it’s worth making an enquiry sooner rather than later to see how we can help with your project.