Garden Design Show 3 - Edible, modern landscape design with lighting design tips

Hello, I'm Rachel Matthews and welcome to the Successful Garden Design show! In this episode, we're gonna take a look at an unconventional fruit producing garden. Now everyone knows how vital a plan is for building a house. Yet very few people realize the plan is just as critical to creating a stunning garden. I'm Rachel Matthews and I've been a professional, international garden designer for over 20 years. I'm also an author and I teach garden design online. My mission is to show you just how much difference good design can make to your garden. I'm going to show you just how simple it can be to transform your garden with a bit of design planning. Now the garden featured in this week's episode, it has something about it that makes it a little unusual. So I want you to pay close attention and I'll ask you a question at the end of the show and there are prizes to be won. So this is today's case study garden in Malaysia. And as you can see, there's not a great deal there but we've, the garden's very overlooked by the flats here. And that's the view looking down on the garden from the property. So, slightly unusual shaped garden. But before we get onto what I've done for the design, I want to show you what Malaysian gardens tend to look like. Now these are some fairly typical examples. This one here was the clientís previous garden and it really looks like it hasnít been landscaped at all in my eyes. So this is quite typical, they have sort of a path down the side, a little feature and then a few things around the outer edges and that tends to be it. They do seem to like having sort of paths through grass; you can have a few trees dotted around and some sort of slightly interesting shaped borders and that tends to be it. But my client wanted something a little bit different. So I will just zoom out and I will show you the plan. Now I will focus in detail on the color version because itís much easier to see whatís going on. But I wanted to show you the mother plan so that you can see the scale of the garden. So hereís the baby one thatís in color. Oaky, so the brief was to design a modern garden to go with the modern house and have something that had a lot more going in on it. So no more of that dull and boring everything around the outside, we want to get in and use the space. So thatís what Iíve done with this design. Now if this goes against everything Malaysian garden should normally stand for, it was really important to my client that we made it as east to build as possible. Now whilst it wouldíve be really fun to go off with sort of do some amazing curve shapes and doing sort of complicated things in here, when youíre sort of stretching the boundaries of what a culture is used to and we certainly found this in this garden here in Spain, when youíre doing something a little bit out of the ordinary, the simpler that you can get it, the better. So the brief was to make it really easy so that nothing could go wrong in the construction. So Iíve kept the shape very very simple, I mean I do anyway but this I made sure it was incredibly simple so we got the rectangle and a circle as our main lawn shapes or carpet grasses as they call it in Malaysia. Now, the main view from the house is very important. So Iíve lined that up, this lawn here, Iíve lined that up with the main view from the house here and put a focal point at the end which is this bench, which just draws the eye down the garden because as you can see itís quite an awkward shape. And we want to take the eyes well away from that and disguise it so by dividing the space up having two separate gardens if you like, we then control the flow and view of how the garden is seen from the house. And this main area is gonna have, because thereís all of these around the outside overlooking the garden, weíve got some small trees in lining the shape, the lawn shape as you can see here. And that just really, that brings some height and it accentuates the length of this lawn. And it also mean that when sitting on the patio area, theyíre definitely not gonna want to be overlooked from the people in all the properties surrounding it. The other thing that was really important to my client was to have a garden that was a food production and they initially wanted at least 60% of the garden to be able to produce food. And on the first draft of this I had a load of fruit trees lining this wall here. but what theyíve decided to do is, ëcoz theyíve got an area of land outside of the main boundary is they put all of the tropical fruit trees on the outside so again thatís gonna help screen the properties beyond. And also you know, theyíd still be able to access all the lovely tropical fruits but it means theyíre not taking up valuable space in the garden. But what we have done along this side is to put in some raised vegetable planters, Timber. And the on the wall here weíve hung some of the wall planting pockets. So this area is gonna be really productive, itís gonna be nice and easy to maintain because weíve got the pat h and the gravel stepping stone is going through h ere. And then all of the wall space has got the planting pockets so you can grow things like strawberries and all sorts of things in these planting pockets hanging down. So every bit of usable space there has been utilized. But you know, if you wanted more food production, thereís no reason why you canít mix fruit and vegetables in with the garden. For example this circle of trees that goes round this lawn area, they could be fruit producing. You could have crops underneath them that light the shade. So thereís a lot you can do and also these areas could be a mixture of ornamental plants and have vegetables. So just because, if you want to have an edible garden, it doesnít mean that it canít still look good and that was one of the main briefs for this garden. Have something thatís modern that looks great, that utilizes the space. Because my client wanted hidden areas not by to see the garden all in one go. So for the patio area here, Iíve used a dark black slab. Now either black limestone or in Malaysia they have lava stone which Iím not actually used to so I donít know if how sort of long lasting it is but itís a really gorgeous color so I there are two options there. Now what Iíve done with the direction of the paving is Iíve run it that way so from top to bottom to again to help make this area look longer. If we run it from left to right it wouldíve accentuated the width and I didnít want to do that I wanted to make the space look longer. And Iíve chosen the black because the cladding along the house, this gorgeous black color and itís got this sort of white lines in between it so they could put some lights pointing in the cement if they really wanted to tie it in but even if they sort of popped the slabs quite closely, this black will still tie up, tie in with the property, so the majority of the property is white but just having that black sort of just tie in nicely and it just helps tie the house in with the garden which is important to do whenever you can. Now to make sure itís a usable family space, we got a decent size patio here under the pergolas so that theyíre protected from the hot sun and they got a swing seat here so they can sit and enjoy the garden and they can pop tables and chairs and a barbeque in this area as well. And then their main focal point is this lovely largely rendered pond which they might use for fish or if they want it purely on a mental way they could put a water blade and have a cascade of water coming down here and it would look lovely lit up at night as well because theyíre planning to light the entire garden. And then as we move on, theyíve got this path that works its way right around the garden and thatís just a stroll around because having areas of the garden thatís hidden does encourage you to sort of walk around and explore it a bit. And thatís always a nice thing to do in a garden. And then the car parking is here so weíve got this main view as you can see in this little sketch here. As whilst they park the car, they got out then theyíve got this view right the way down to the end here where theyíll see a statue and theyíll catch a glimpse of the circular lawn at the end and the view is framed by this very modern pergola here and then the stepping stones match the paving that weíve used on the patios so it all ties in. And then to keep this lawn edge really neat and tidy, weíve used a smaller version of the paving, that black continuity and that will just edge both of the lawns actually you can see here as well and that allows the plants to spill out over the paving without damaging the lawn areas. So where ever theyíre walking around the garden theyíve always got focal point like here, weíre suggesting say a wall mask or something so that as they come out here thereís always something that draws the eye. And thatís really important in design, to have focal points. But not just focal points anywhere. At the end of views are the obvious places and they make sense and they sort of draw it out and Iíve put another one in here so as theyíre walking along here, thereís a statue there as well. So your eye goes from one focal point to another as you work your way around the garden. The paths here, these could just be without edging or if you want to keep it neat and tidy you could put sort of metal or timber edge that bends round just to keep the gravel in place. So if youíve used sort of river stone, just to, for the main path areas. And stepping stones is gonna be some spare stepping stones left from the old balcony, when they come out, youíll have those and we can recycle those in the garden and that just helps keep cost down. Itís always good to recycle materials whenever possible. And as I mentioned this will be lit so all of the pergola post will be lit up at night and also all of the trees so weíve got the stems of them up lit and all of the focal points. Itís important with lighting to not just light the main focal point, you do have to light how the visual journey of getting from A to B. So we wouldnít just pop on light there. We put them all the way down the path, all around the trees and a few in the borders just so that that isnít glowing in the dark on its own. There is a visual each journey to reach it because it sort of makes more sense and it just makes the whole scheme come together more. Now to match the paving, weíve also painted the timber pergola, thatís painted black and so are the vegetable planters as well. So everything ties in together. So when youíre using hard landscaping materials, try not to use too many different types. Three is usually enough and we definitely got that here with the timber, the pergola, the gravel and the stepping stones. You donít really want too many things going on especially in a modern garden. The simpler you can keep things, the better if youíre going for modern look. Now something Iíd like you to notice about this garden is the shapes that weíve used. If you look at it itís actually really quite traditional. You know, we got a formal shaped lawn, weíve got sort of trees lining here the side a bit and certainly around this circular lawn, I mean if that had a circular clipped hue hedge with some planting in front you could almost be in sitting in this garden. So the design shape we ëve used could go into a formal garden quite easily. So therefore, if itís not the shape weíve used, what is it that makes this garden look modern? So once again you can enter by leaving your answers on the comments page on the show notes of the website which is successfulgardendesign.com/show3. So this gives you another chance to win that fabulous garden design workshop that walks you through the behind the scenes in simple formula that I used to create gardens just like this one. Well, I hope youíve enjoyed todayís show. Now Iíd be really grateful if you could help me and spread the word and get it out there Just the difference that design can make to a garden. So please do share this on Facebook. And also leave a review on iTunes and thumbs up on YouTube and a comment and let me know what youíd like to see in future episodes. Now next week weíre gonna do another quick sketch challenge. So if youí like to enter your garden to be featured on the show and have me come up with as many ideas as I can in 10 minutes or less then you can enter it at the successful garden design Facebook page and Iíll put a link in the show notes at the bottom. And to enter into this weekís competition and tell me why the garden that we featured today was modern and not traditional looking, you can leave you answer at successfulgardendesign.com/show3. I look forward to seeing you next time, until then, take care. And you can download your free landscaping guide from successfulgardendesign.com/help-guide