FRONT & REAR GARDENS, LANCING BEACH
A newly built seafront house on Lancing Beach needed to link with its surroundings and have a sense of place. The front garden looked hard with a vast area of austere paving. The rear garden looked sparse with standard fence, lawn, shed in the corner and a dated looking gym.
Before our incredible clients moved along the coast from Brighton to Lancing they used to walk past one of our front gardens and decided they wanted something similar for their new home. They put all their faith in us to create front and rear gravel gardens with an abundance of drought and salt tolerant plants as well as a number of exquisite features.
Using some of our favourite materials we created dedicated areas in the rear garden for kitchen and dining, lounge and hot tub. Limestone is king here with Jura Beige slabs mixed with small unit Limestone stackers and five stunning Langton Limestone boulders, all knitted together with the most wonderful Purbeck gravel. The gym had a facelift, replacing the split slate with vertical slatted cedar battens to warm up the exterior and the hot tub was screened off with a row of pleached trees and hedge to offer complete privacy. There's also an industrial themed outdoor shower. Cedar screens were placed to help divide the space and also act as wind barriers as this stretch of coastline is very exposed.
In the front garden a lamp post and telegraph pole needed to disappear along with the busy coast road. A stunning Pine was carefully positioned to completely obscure the unsightly uprights and the traffic.
With all that structural and intricate hard landscaping we wanted to leave 60% of the overall footprint for planting, and it's the latter that not only compliments and works with the materials, but really does create something quite breathtaking. From the inside ground floor, with concertina doors open front and rear, you can feel the connection with the outside and a perfect harmony of hard and soft landscaping running through the scheme. We're super proud of this one, which barely deviated from the original creative visuals and we just love rocking up and seeing it all flourish and huge smiles on our clients faces.
Photography by Sarah Ketelaars: sarahketelaars.com
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