Garden Design & Landscaping, Bampton, Oxfordshire

Our aim was to create an outside entertaining space that felt like a natural extension of the clients home. To achieve this we brought the outside level up in-line with the floors of the house, adding Indian sandstone paving and decking made of heat-treated ash. This was to mimic the stone floor and floorboards within the house so the client could walk from stone floors in the home to a stone floor outside, creating an inside/outside space for ease of entertaining.

We used reclaimed york coping stones placed on top of a rebuilt cotswold stone wall, using lime mortar, to create a stone seating area around the outside perimeter of the garden. This was backed by a hand woven willow screen fence, making more defined boundaries with neighbours whilst also creating shade for the stone seating area.

To deal with the challenge of obscuring the concrete wall, whilst keeping the climbing hydrangea, we carefully pulled back the hydrangea and supported it, whilst putting up a new panel wall made of weatherboard, which we painted and then retrained the climber onto it.

We incorporated the bin store into a staircase, which was made of timber and stone steps, made to look like a mediterranean exterior staircase, this can be climbed to view the setting sun. A reclaimed victorian bath was turned into a small pond as a fun, theatrical feature, in line with the brief to make it an entertaining space for opera lovers. This we planted with lilies and put in a pump system to allow the tap to run as a fountain. Adding water to the space was also useful for adding a cooling feature to a hot area of the garden.