Modern New Build Garden in North Nottinghamshire

These days, you can’t expect to get anything for free. This is particularly the case when buying a new build home.

Back when I bought my first house (which was a new build) back in the 1990s, my postage stamp garden consisted of two trees, six concrete paving slabs and some turf. But, meagre as this was, my new build garden came as part of the purchase price.

Fast forward to 2017. If our clients’ new build home required grass, they were told, they’d have to pay extra for it.

Fortunately, as they’d earmarked the space for a garden designed by us, they didn’t bother with turf (and looking at the soil the developer left behind, it’s just as well).

A contemporary entertaining space

Our brief was to design a garden to match the contemporary style of the new build property. Our clients wanted large entertaining spaces, a water feature, and were keen to include rendered walls to compliment the exterior of the new house.

Our clients wanted to do as much of the build and labouring work as possible, so we provided them with detailed construction plans for them to follow.

A subtle water feature with elegant planting

The water feature we designed features three stainless steel tubes that trickle water into a reservoir hidden beneath some attractive stone cobbles. Flow balance valves to ensure the water flows evenly and slowly enough to create the desired effect.

The wall housing the water feature is faced with split-face multicolour slate mosaic tiles.

Before we could plant anything we had to improve the soil by adding lots of well-rotted farmyard manure. Our planting palette uses a mix of purple and green foliage, dotted with orange and red flowers. We softened the structural tree fern and box ball with Zantedeschia, Crocosmia ‘Lucifer’, Persicaria ‘Red Dragon’, Acer palmatum, Astrantia ‘Hadspen Blood’, Heuchera ‘Blackberry Crisp’, Festuca glauca and Hemerocallis ‘Stafford’.

The garden has been subtly lit with LED up-lighters to create an atmospheric space to enjoy late into the evening.