Petersfield, Hampshire, Country Garden | Walled Garden

Our brief for this expansive garden space in Petersfield, Hampshire, was to design a vegetable garden inspired by the restored Kitchen Gardens at Hampton Court Palace, a space that is not only highly productive, but visually stunning too. For our project we had a 3,000 square metre blank canvas framed by surrounding woodland which we have effectively harnassed to ‘cradle’ our modern take on a Walled Vegetable Garden. Circular designs for vegetable gardens can be something of a challenge to get right but they are very pleasing to the eye and a pleasure to work on. The curved outer wall is echoed with the planting of a low yew hedge, creating a design of circles within circles all of which are softly and beautifully framed by the natural landscape.

Our client, a keen vegetable gardener, left behind a productive allotment at her previous address. The very first step needed to be a comprehensive soil analysis which, in turn, would show us what was required to make the soil productive. Working with a sandy free-draining soil which we improved by digging down to half a metre to break up the pan, land raking the top surface and then adding a rich fertilising manure. The use of synthetic fruit cages can often spoil an otherwise pleasing kitchen garden. We worked with our local timber mill which – under the careful and accurate eye of our in-house joiner – crafted circular oak posts with mortise and tenon joins to make fruit frames that enhance the aeshetics of the site. This will, over time, weather down to a softer presence on the garden.

We selected a bespoke Victorian-style greenhouse by Alitex, and the eye-catching globe statue in the centre of the garden is a David Harbour sculpture.