Looking out from the lower-ground floor of Julie Harkin’s Victorian terraced home, a swaying mass of soft, green planting completely fills your view. The effect is calm, nurturing, and a million miles away from the bustle and traffic of the busy north London enclave where she lives with her husband and young son.
“Four years ago, we did a massive renovation on the house, including a new rear extension, but I wanted the garden to set the tone,” says Julie. With lots of ideas but no horticultural experience, she trawled the internet and soon discovered landscape designer Miria Harris, who specialises in ecologically sensitive gardens. “Her work felt like nothing I had seen anywhere before – soft and wild, with a truly artistic aesthetic.”
In brief: A small sloping garden in London
- Where London
- Size 20m x 7m
- Soil London clay
- Aspect West-facing
Few clients have the foresight to bring their landscape designer on board before the builders have even broken ground, and Miria, in her turn, relished the unusual opportunity to influence the architectural direction of the project. “Like a lot of London terraced houses, the internal lower floor level here is 2m below garden level, which would usually be dealt with by the construction of visually dominant retaining walls,” she says.
You may also like:
- Matt Evans' long, narrow town garden in Bath
- 31 small garden design ideas
- Modern small garden ideas
- A deceptively simple small garden from Sheila Jack
- A small London courtyard garden
“I suggested we take a softer approach and create a bank of planting to traverse the level change instead. It takes bravery to abandon conventional approaches – and the builder did need a lot of persuading that plant roots would sufficiently stabilise the ground – but I think we have proved that it can be done successfully.”
While these plans were being finalised, Miria tackled the weed-filled front garden, where she took another unorthodox decision. “Instead of planting to completely block out the street view, I elected to veil it, creating a softened sense of place that I think is very grounding in an urban setting.”
A beautiful specimen Cornus kousa var. chinensis now anchors this small space, and domes of Veronica rakaiensis, Ilex crenata, Osmanthus x burkwoodii, Betula x plettkei ‘Golden Treasure’ and Pittosporum tenuifolium ‘Golf Ball’ give year-round structure, all blurred into an undulation of ferns and ornamental grasses. “I wanted to set the blueprint for what you would find in the back garden, so a lot of these plants, along with bistorts, rodgersias and astrantias, are repeated in both spaces.”
As soon as the rear extension, with its floor-to-ceiling sliding glass doors, was completed, Miria set to work on planting up the 45-degree bank that rises from the back terrace in a mirror image of the sloping front garden.
Her work felt like nothing I had seen before: soft and wild
Julie had asked for a calm, predominantly green palette which picked up accents of colour from the interior design, and was surprised but delighted when Miria introduced her to Rodgersia pinnata ‘Fireworks’, which bears flower spikes in exactly the same shade of dusky rose that she had chosen for her curtains. “Garden planting has to have horticultural integrity,” says Miria, “but it is also important for the interior and exterior to speak to each other.”
The effect from indoors is mesmerically harmonious. At lower-ground level, a dynamic tapestry of plants immerses you in a natural world far removed from the street outside.
A selection of ornamental grasses punctuated with loose mounds of Ilex crenata, pittosporum and Betula x plettkei ‘Golden Treasure’ form a green foundation onto which Miria has woven Japanese anemones, feathery astilbes and a carpet of Bistorta affinis ‘Donald Lowndes’, which spills generously out onto the terrace.
The thing I really enjoy about this garden now is the way it draws your eye outwards and upwards
Through it all floats a shallow flight of steps, meandering up to the higher ground level of this characteristically long, thin garden, where Miria has laid a small, species-rich lawn fringed with meadow grass and framed by more perennial beds.
“In this centre section, we also put some raised vegetable beds and both espaliered and free-standing plum and cherry trees,” says Miria. “I always include fruit trees if I possibly can. They are such a powerful connector of people and place, and here they echo two mature apricot trees which sit at the top of the bank.”
At the very end of the garden, in the shade of overhanging plane and lime trees, Miria has also managed to tuck in a useful service area and storage shed – and still found space for a secluded seating nook, sheltered under a pergola smothered in Trachelospermum jasminoides.
“The thing I really enjoy about this garden now is the way it draws your eye outwards and upwards, so that you really feel part of it,” says Julie.
As a successful casting director, her days are always busy, but that can involve sitting for hours reading through scripts, and she loves the fact that she can now settle down to work surrounded by a sea of plants. “It is exactly the sort of restorative space I dreamed of when I first spoke to Miria,” she says. “I feel privileged to have it.”
Useful information
Find out more about Miria Harris’s work at miriaharris.com
