GreEnCO Sense – RHS Young Garden Designer Finalist
Surrey garden designer, Chris James’ design ‘GreEnCO Sense’ highlights the possibilities in creating an environmentally aware garden. A design which features sustainability, the use of recycled materials, and good planting design.
The garden creates a microhabitat as a haven for bees and other insects, which allows them to thrive alongside the human impact of various man-made, recycled and sustainable features. ‘GreEnCO Sense’ has been inspired as a show garden, which disproves the common misconception that recycled and sustainable gardens are bland, monotone, spaces which lack design detail & flair. The cohesion of shape, space and materials (soft & hard landscaping) has been carefully planned to develop a design to integrate within the show ground setting.
‘GreEnCO Sense’ is a Show Garden, which can be translated into a real-life garden. Within an eye-catching design, which focuses the viewer, the design draws the user to the central terrace, whether it is to read a book on the bench, for children to play on the meadow or take a route through the planting. The garden adds a ‘twist’ to the common requirements set out by clients. 10m long recycled wine bottle wall with sculptural view through, solar heating & reclaimed York Stone base. A Copper Pergola stripped from old boiler tanks at 2.6m x 6m x 6m. Large York Stone fragments, which are a bi-product of man’s normal requirement to extract and cut stone, have been incorporated in establishing the levels & detail of the standing structures. A central circular viewpoint in the bottled wall is designed to capture the viewer’s attention and focus it through to a mature tree beyond, set within the natural landscape of Tatton Park.
The self-contained meadow grass planters allow an infertile and free draining soil to prevail in meadow areas. With the planting design orientated in a southern aspect, the main planted beds are also on a free draining soil but require regular moisture and are moisture retentive. They would be identified as a sandy loam with a pH of approximately 6.5.
Soft tones of blue through to purples are contrasted with deep reds and yellows. White is used as a balance with the foliage of the Peonies & Fennel used for colour rather than flower at this time of the year.
