Kinross 1

Project Background

The clients have owned this property for many years but a recent large garage extension with workshop and sun room on one boundary meant that the remaining long, thin, walled rear garden needed to be remodelled. The clients wanted to retain some of the existing planting and the project was constrained by the narrow doorway from the driveway into the rear garden, which meant that no machines could be brought into the area. The views from the new sun room were marred by unattractive buildings in neighbouring gardens, and the wooden storage shed needed to be retained, but disguised in some way. The garden was professionally redesigned to provide the clients with a peaceful, plant-filled haven that would be attractive to both humans and wildlife, and Creating Eden was invited to undertake the landscaping works.

Landscaping Notes

The new garden layout retained the existing ground levels in the garden but some reshaping work was required, using manual labour only. Very little material was taken out of the garden and existing stones were used to create retaining edges for the low raised planting areas that surrounded the oval sunken garden between the house and new extension. New, wide steps were built, using stone risers and deep treads to enter and leave this sunken area. Chipped plum slate was specified as the hardscape material throughout the rear garden. An informal path was created between the sun room and deep planting area, which then split into two at the top end of the garden to allow access to a stone bench or to the black-stained (and now concealed) shed. Everedge steel edging was installed to retain the chipped slate here. The ugly views from the sun room were sneakily masked using black-stained wooden trellis with acrylic garden mirror behind, a design trick we are becoming accustomed to installing in professionally designed gardens. Visitors to the garden are constantly intrigued by these ‘interesting’ garden boundaries!  Creating Eden helped to plant the garden, in the hot dry summer of 2018, then laid a thick layer of fine composted bark mulch over the soil to help to retain moisture and keep weeds at bay. These photographs were taken one year on. Having completed the rear garden, the clients then asked us to upgrade the driveway and parking area at the front of the house, and to build an enclosed wheelie bin store. Note the slot drain between the driveway and the parking area at the front of the house, to catch and carry surface water into an existing drain.

This garden was designed and planted by Belinda Macdonald from Shades of Green Garden Design (now retired).