Kate Gould is an award winning garden designer with more than a decade of hands-on experience transforming gardens of all sizes. She became a winner of the prestigious Silver Gilt Medal in the Urban Gardens Category at the Chelsea Flower Show.
‘A Joy Forever Garden’ is an enclosed sunken garden for a small, contemporary terraced house. The owner profile is a young couple who like to use their garden for entertaining and relaxing at all times of the year, but who don’t necessarily have a lot of spare time to do gardening. The area is effectively an outdoor room, with enough structure to look good 365 days a year. The modern feel of the property is reflected in the garden, providing a strong and interesting picture throughout the year. Rainwater harvesting is integrated into the scheme and all the floor surfaces are to be permeable.
A Joy Forever is a garden designed to provide privacy for a young couple who like to use their garden for entertainment, even though it is only 7x5m in size. The main features are a bespoke glass and mirrored steel fireplace that divides the garden in two. The mirrored surface makes the garden feel larger and reflects the water feature opposite it. The water feature runs crystal clear to compliment the clear nature of the glass in the fireplace.
The outdoor lounge area of the garden is furnished with a sofa set from Hartman UK who sponsored the garden and this is set over permeable paving planted with low growing plants. The raised beds around the furniture are planted with an edge of Buxus sempervirens behind which is planted Hesperis matronalis, Tracheleospermum and Phlox divaricata, all of which are sweetly scented and are happy under the shade cast by a light canopied multi-stem Birch and small Acer palmatum. In order to provide additional privacy to the scheme the garden was enclosed by pleached Carpinus betulus which created a boundary screen that could also be under-planted.
In order to use all available space in the garden a specially designed ‘unit’ was commissioned from a joiner to fit under the raised bed. It was constructed from Iroko and houses small garden tools, wood for the fireplace, blankets, garden cutlery etc. Above this unit was a sculpture by Mike Speller , which was reflected several times in the mirrored glass fireplace at night.
A regular exhibitor at the Chelsea Flower Show, Kate also writes a blog for the Guardian filled with tips for transforming your garden. www.kategouldgardens.com
