All explained by Garden Ninja, Manchesters Garden Designer and blogger Lee Burkhill. He’s an RHS winning garden designer and expert panellist on BBC Radio Manchester’s Saturday morning garden phone in.
Why not subscribe to my youtube channel? https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCuhMHrXyf2bvga2Mq0DJvwQ
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/gardenninjadesign/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Garden_Ninja
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/garden_ninja_lee/
Today I’m in Liverpool and its day one of this garden redesign, its a new build property If you can see if I move around its really heavily overlooked. Thats one of the main drawbacks of new built gardens
So I’ve put together a design which should increase the privacy and give a real contemporary modern look to this garden, so the owners can sit out at night rest and relax without all those peering eyes looking down on them, so its day one the lads are here stripping the ground so I’m going to keep you updated on the progress.
So the hard landscaping work is now done and the plants hve arrived so today its planting day! So I’m gonna get busy in arranging these plants don’t forget this is a modernist planting scheme so my other work which is more natural this is gonna be in blocks of color groups of plants to give a real pop to this garden.
Look at all this gorgeous-ness! All these beautiful plants in big drifts we can just imagine how they are going to look when they are planted out in this modernist scheme. We’ve got a few weeds to get rid of it
just ignore that for now but when it’s done and the ground is like this
we are then going to be planting!
So it’s day two here on the modernist garden redesign I just want to talk you through Acers so in this garden we’ve got three now my Japanese pronunciation is probably not the best but we’ve got an Acer Sango Kaku behind us we’ve got Acer Saku just there and then in the back far corner we’ve got a good old Acer Bloodgood
Now when you’re buying Acers don’t be tempted to buy small specimens because that take forever to grow so what you want to do it’s by a larger
specimen to give real impact because you’re going to be waiting years if not.
Each one of these acers has a different form whether that be the leaves or the colors so there’s interesting each of them throughout the season but the most spectacular interest will be important when the leaves turn either an orange a yellow or a fiery red for they fall so Acer is a great tree for a small garden and a focal point, so im going to crack on now and get the rest of the plants in, now behind me we’ve got the seating area and it’s a big horseshoe shaped raised bed and again we’re using that modernist block color effect with the planting the repetition to keep it simple to basically draw your eye outside of the house and into the garden as if it’s one space.
So talking about proportion this path is a good example so you can see that it mirrors the doors ahead so that when you’re inside your eye gets pulled down the path and into the garden so whenever you’re doing a path make sure that you take some of the proportions from the house such as the width of the windows and doors and mirror them because it really helps bring the garden into the house.
So behind me we’ve got two rectangular lawns that intersect and it’s those clear lines that are key with a modern garden design I’ve then used blocks of color along the border with some evergreen in the Skimmia we’ve got Astilbe which gives that bright pink color it doesn’t mind a bit of shade Crocosmia dotted through so keeping two key color palettes here and it’s all block color but then move over here we’ve got really contemporary K rendered raised bed which acts is the seating area in the garden so this is where we’re going to have things like table and chairs parasol barbecue drinks in the evening all that kind of stuff would be going on here and we’ve recessed some lights into the floor so that even in the evening this area will light up.
I’ve got again blocks of color in the raised beds with things like the Heucheras and the Stipa grass just giving a bit of texture so it feels nested but not too overbearing because you want to be able to see through to the house and the rest of the garden then got the incredible gravel garden and they absolutely love this we’ve got Corten steel bowl which acts as both a design feature but some were for nature to come and stop for a drink and maybe a chat with the neighbours we’ve got grasses we’ve got the Acers of focal points which
will change dot the air and give a whole spectrum of color from reds yellows and greens.