Mediterranean Garden

This summer was one of the hottest on record. A client wanted help with a design. They had just moved into a new house and found that the old vegetable patch was beyond their capability. After reassuring them that vegetable growing isn’t for everyone and that the space could easily be turned into a gravel garden providing a quiet corner for them to spend sunny afternoons they went for it. We surveyed the space, drew up a plan and executed the project within a month. The soil beneath the gravel was redistributed around the garden, as it had been well dug before. It seemed a shame to take out the currants and gooseberries but sometimes you need to be bold to get a new result.

The planting scheme was mediterranean which suited the hot summer and because we were planting from pots everything was possible with a lot of watering. We planted in rows of lavender, a standard olive tree, three Cupressus semperviren (Italian Cypress trees), white agapanthus, a fig, with mediterranean perennials and grasses around the borders. Climbers such as roses, trachelospermum and wisteria were planted to adorn the fences.

The clients immediately got use of this otherwise nagging space and it was such a good result in a record breaking hot summer.