An opportunity for exploring new ideas.
Corstorphine garden evolves.
A Corstorphine garden in need of less maintenance and more relaxation and enjoyment. It slopes down towards the house and the distant sound of Lions can be heard from Edinburgh zoo, more locally, foxes may have made a home.
The Garden in its Winter coat
It was a great family garden with areas for flowers, vegetables, trees/shrubs and lots for lawn for kids to play. Kids have grown up moved out and a much loved garden needs to evolve without changing too much! Uses and hopes for the garden space have changed, memories remain.
Hiking in the Swiss mountains
Reduced maintenance was a main request with cutting the grass being a key factor. Unfortunately grass cutting is actually one of the easier garden tasks and so reducing it or replacing it comes with many other aspects which all have various degrees of maintenance and of course cost! Delving further into needs and hopes, having more interest and places to relax and enjoy the garden were also very important. Memories of holidays walking in the Swiss alps were also fondly recalled as a happy place to be. A design concept began….
A sense of journeys…
A journey uphill from the back of the house up to the solitary Monkey puzzle tree at the top of the garden was envisaged. “ is there anyway we can keep the monkey puzzle tree, it looks a bit lost up there”. Of course there is! we aim to try and keep everything thats good and needed in the garden. It just needs to be made to feel more at home!
From glen through meadow to hill top
The main paving beside house is retained, cleaned and pointed. From here steps rise up to what is the start of the lawn proving difficult to maintain. A number of mow-edge circles are built, each planted with specimen shrubs to create a woodland walk to begin the journey. The lawn becomes grass pathways of numerous choice.
structure and definition
structure and definition go a long way to helping a space feel ordered and under control, allowing other elements to happily get looser around the edges. A network of grass pathways mower width or wider emerge out of the lower lawn area.
Don’t be foxed!
Just off to the right side of the garden in amongst the area designed to be open grassland and meadow style planting is, as shown by the sand smoothed night before, an active fox den. The design has been adapted to work with this amazing feature already within the garden…further adptations will be needed as we combine all the different spaces and uses ( and learn from the fox)!
New from Old
We started out in 1998 using ‘new from old gardens’ as a tag line and this project is a great example. A network of new seating areas have been built using the materials found around the old seating areas. The original lawn has been reshaped and structured into a wide and open ‘glade’, with naturalised planting and shrubs in keeping with an upland slope surrounding it.The top corner ( beside the fox den) has a paved craggy terrace with rock pool beside it and a restored original bench with views back down the garden. This is accessed by a scree path through sedums and juniper and past the Monkey puzzle tree in its new craggy surrounds.
craggy ‘ hill top’ plateau
On reaching the plateau, a scree path leads to a familiar bench and seat beside a small rock pool fed by a bubbling spring. From here you can see all the way back to where you began and if you are really quiet you may see some neighbours emerging from from their den otherside of the stone terrace from you!
Where the Journey begins.
Garden getting used by more than just the fox!.
new garden begins?
The new garden which in so many ways is the old garden, has begun it’s new journey. How is it to look after…..so far so good, but it is early days. The fox has taken to it well, having returned from is Spring home elsewhere and has tried creating a few new places! but has returned to its main and undisturbed residence.
The grass !….is much easier to manage by getting a new battery powered mower that is a third of the weight of the old petrol one, especially with the new mow edge installed all round. The numerous seating options from glen to hill top are widely used, depending on mood and time of day.
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Working out why and what needs changed is essential
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how to build your why and what is critical and influenced by many factors….many many approaches exist
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Once you have finished you’ve only just started, seeing how the garden and yourself changes through the seasons, informs further changes and adaptions….its ongoing.
