I recently visited NT Stowe, Buckinghamshire, a huge ‘garden’ full of ‘garden’ buildings, statues, dams and bridges, created by Viscount Cobham from 1717 working with several landscape designers and architects
I love the way the shadows of this sculpture play across the stone paving when the lights come on in the evening. It’s a focal point, art installation, meeting point, lighting and way finder.
All around the UNESCO World Heritage Site of medieval Siena you see these wonderful iron horse tethers fixed into the walls of buildings at about 6′ high. There are 17 different designs across the city each advertising which ‘ward’ or ‘contrada’ they represent.
The vast acreage of the Upton House gardens (National Trust) may be difficult to replicate but there are plenty of design ideas that can inspire and be used on a much smaller scale. This is a quiet, shady corner on a little path feels quite enclosed and hidden.
This bright blue firework of a flower is an eryngium (or sea holly) – a fabulous architectural plant. There are many different eryngiums mostly grown ornamentally and can be annual or perennial (this one is perennial), usually blue or white (the most well-known being ‘Miss Willmott’s Ghost’).
Eyecatchers are a great way to draw people around a garden and to show them where you’d like them to go – that there’s something else to see. Not many of us have the space that they have at Chatsworth to play with eyecatchers on this scale, but they work on any scale.
I love taking photos of buildings in reflections and through old wonky glass. I love the way the glass distorts the building and how you view it. It brings another dimension to the scene. This image also plays with the scale of people
I visited Weston Park for the first time this week for a heritage event – previously I’ve only got as far as The Granary restaurant. It’s a fabulous place so if you’re at a loose end this weekend and it’s good weather, I highly recommend it.
I love this path. It’s simple, fun, functional, pragmatic, suits its informal location, uses natural materials and looks really good. It just illustrates too that a garden and its features don’t have to be overthought or over-engineered – they can just do what they set out to do and job done.
You can make a garden seem bigger by ‘borrowing’ the surrounding landscape – many designers for centuries to great effect. Here are some ideas of how to do this: