Graduate Gardeners

Beautiful gardens for beautiful homes…

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The British Association of Landscape Industries’ prestigious landscaping Awards is the largest in Europe, providing a spectacular end of year ceremony showcasing the finest examples of landscaping excellence in the UK and overseas.

Graduate Gardeners are proud to announce that we have submitted three fabulous gardens for the 2021 BALI National Landscaping Awards

The ‘Grads’ team are excited to be going to London this week to see if any of their 3 fantastic Award Winning Gardens are selected for a BALI Principal Award, and maybe even more.
Each of The ‘Grads’ designers has a garden entered, and each in a separate category, so, we are not competing with each other this year, just the ‘Best of the Rest’

The house was going through total renovation when we were first approached to look at the project. The main criteria of the brief was to maximise the view, provide much better parking, enhance the entrance (taking vehicles away from the front door) and to create much more usable areas around the garden because both upper and lower gardens were steeply sloping.

There were a number of significant areas of construction, most notably and by far the most impressive was the construction of the dry stone retaining wall. A structural Engineer was brought in because Cleeve Hill is notorious for movement, the final decision was to build the retaining wall purely out of dry stone with no foundation other than the stone beneath the ground.

To achieve this over 600 tons of material was excavated and over 300 tons of walling stone used, each placed by hand to create a wall that was 1.5m wide at the base (500mm below ground level) and 600mm at the top, finished height was an average of 1.8m.

A one piece ‘Swim Spa’ was sourced from Guernsey and craned into position.

The client had a family friend that produced porcelain therefore this was used for all the paved surfacing other than the steps

Sheepscombe House is a Grade 2 listed Georgian Manor House set in a stunning location surrounded by a rolling landscape and valley views.

The original drive layout and the area to the side of the house, did not do justice to the property, the severe slope that fell across the side of the house gave little ‘foundation’ to the appearance of the house, providing an impractical turning circle and parking.

The brief therefore was to provide a new repositioned drive, a parking area so that cars were not sitting right outside the house, position for a garage/stable and a garden area that sat directly outside the house.

Given the topography of the site, careful planning in the design process was needed in order to fulfil the brief. Planning permission and listed building consent was needed, the choice of materials was therefore paramount to the success of the project. The other key factor of the design was making sure the layout linked with the existing areas of the garden and the landscape beyond.

Given the amount of soil shifting, the design incorporates recontouring of the lower lawn and wildflower areas, meaning that all spoil generated could be kept on site.

This project involved the Design and Landscaping of the old sunken walled garden of ‘Cheltenham’s Finest Manor House’ into a Swimming Pool / Garden Room area.

New steps had to be built to access the area, and also the newly refurbished out buildings which include changing room, toilet and Sauna had to be made usable from the pool area.

New borders were created around the paved areas and paths, and a large terrace for the barbecue and outdoor seating, with low maintenance water features near the garden room. The client also wanted grey composite decking around a partially sunken new Hot Tub to link in with the Oak framework of the garden room/office. 

Irrigation and Lighting was also requested to uplight the existing brick boundary wall, the new planting and the steps and decking. Screening was needed from the neighbours above and a large water Irrigation tank.

The client has a gardener so the planting was to be medium maintenance.