The Brief
A blend of old and new is the narrative behind the design of this beautiful sloping garden surrounding a traditional farmhouse cottage that sits at the foot of the Mendip Hills in North Somerset. ‘The clients were looking to create a garden that enabled them to have more of an outdoor lifestyle,’ explains Will Cooke, Founder and Managing Director of award-winning garden design and landscaping company, Artisan Landscapes, who were commissioned to transform the garden. ‘The brief initially given to us was to locate a swimming pool and then connect the swimming pool to the house. It then developed, as sometimes briefs do, and we ended up designing quite an extensive incorporated cantilevered roofed pool house, which is the main feature of the garden alongside the swimming pool,’ says Will. The challenge with the project was that the garden is sited on a hillside. ‘Not only did we have to locate the swimming pool and design a beautiful pool house, but we also had to create a flow and journey from the house, which is actually lower than the site of the swimming pool.’
The Project
A mature garden already existed with established landscaping around the house, as well as functional pathways and a small patio. Two mature copper beech trees were standout features so the team designed around those. ‘In essence, the design is a design within a garden rather than a full garden design. We didn’t landscape the whole space, although we did end up relaying turf and making the rest of the garden in keeping with what we designed,’ explains Will. The swimming pool, pool house and the connection to the house were the key things that the design focused on.’
At some point, there had been a very large pond that had been filled in by previous owners and what remained was an area of flat lawn space, so this provided direction as to where the pool could go. Next to this was a summerhouse, and it was decided to site the pool house in its place. Artisan Landscapes then added in some other areas for relaxation and zoning, such as a handy seating area beside the house and a beautiful dining terrace in the shadow of one of the copper beech trees. Linking the areas was a priority. Will describes it as ‘a garden to get from one destination to the other with moments and points of reflection and relaxation as you move through it. It’s a garden to journey through.
Our Buscot Limestone in a tumbled and etched finish played a key role in the pathways, swimming pool surround, terraces and pathways. It is a stone that Will has used before. ‘Our aesthetic is very much about bridging the divide between traditional properties and gardens and a contemporary aesthetic. We are always looking to use beautiful materials that bridge that gap for us,’ he says. ‘Buscot Limestone did that perfectly. We wanted a warm honey-coloured natural material that bounced light around the garden and created a soft neutral putty coloured backdrop to the colour of the swimming pool. The clients had decided on a finishing material on the inside of the pool to create an aquamarine water colour, and we wanted to mimic that through the stone that was used around the swimming pool. We wanted to enhance the tonality of the reddish grey rubble stone that you find in that area of Somerset by using Buscot, which has real warmth to it. Buscot also brought in interesting texture.’
Continued below...
Existing rubble boulders from the site were used to create a retaining wall around the swimming pool ‘so there is an aspect of organic sweeping curves with this boulder retaining wall,’ while all the coping stones, paving stones in the pool and relaxation areas, pathways and steps are in Buscot. One of the logistical challenges of the garden because of its sloping nature were the multiple sets of steps. ‘There are probably around 15 steps to get up from the house to the pool terrace,’ explains Will.
Buscot was used for the floor of the pool house too, which comprises a kitchen, dining area and sunken seating area (although the seating area has a micro cement floor).
The planting was designed to complement the stone in the garden. ‘It concentrates on balancing the colour of the local red stone and the neutral putty coloured Buscot limestone, while introducing some plants that really popped with colour,’ says Will. An area of wildflower meadow around the original beech trees, meanwhile, was used to bridge the blend of a more contemporary layout with the more traditional and rural location that the garden is set in, and used to soften down the harsher lines of the contemporary layout.
Credits: