Country Estate

This 18 Century Dutch style manor house was built alongside a much older, smaller house forming an L shaped footprint.

The surrounding ornamental gardens were quite small but sat within approximately 6 acres of open land.

The brief was that the surrounding land should be made more integral to the house and that the ornamental gardens should be more sympathetic to the houses architecture.

It was also important that the overall maintenance of the gardens was kept manageable. The solution was to make 2 very distinct and contrasting kinds of space – extremely controlled and formal around the buildings with the focus being on highly sculpted forms, subtle shifts of texture and beautiful detailing to reflect the house, then the open fields around being left seemingly ‘wild’ with large areas being returned to meadow and a mix of native and ornamental trees added.