Landscape Design

Most gardens here are handed over as a lawn, a boundary wall and a strip of paving. What decides whether anyone uses them is not the planting. It is whether there is shade at five in the afternoon, whether air moves through, and whether there is a reason to walk out there in the first place.

So we start with the sun and the plot, before a single plant is chosen. Where the shadow falls at four in March and at seven in November. Which corner takes the wind and which one traps heat. Then what the space is for: a majlis you can receive guests in, a table that seats twenty in winter, somewhere the children can be loud, somewhere you can sit alone with coffee at six in the morning. Those answers set the structures, and the structures set everything after them.

From there we design the outside as one place rather than a list of features. Shade first, which means pergolas, canopies and planted screens. Then the ground: levels, paving, steps, and how you cross from the house without feeling you have left it. Water, where a pool or a feature belongs and where it would only add heat and maintenance. The working parts, an outdoor kitchen, seating, storage. Lighting, which matters more here than almost anywhere, because for most of the year the garden is used after dark. And planting chosen for this soil and this climate, with irrigation designed rather than retrofitted.

The material language carries through from the interior, so the house does not stop at the glass. As with the rest of our work, we can stop at a documented design for your own contractor, or carry the garden through construction ourselves. Say which when you write to us and we will scope it accordingly.