After nearly 20 years in their garden, over the course of which it had been a football and cricket pitch, a campsite and a teenage party venue for their three now-grown-up children, Lizzie and David Currie decided it was time for a refresh.
The garden in leafy west London benefits from mature planting around the boundaries, including a row of pleached beech trees, and is a generous size for a town garden, but Lizzie admits it was “basically looking very tired and wasn’t fit for purpose anymore”. The lawn was threadbare, porcelain paving was cracked and a new garden room didn’t sit well with the previous layout.
Lizzie found garden designer Alexandra Noble via a Google search, loved all the gardens pictured on her website, and got in touch. The brief she gave was to create a journey through a beautiful, immersive garden to a sauna and cold plunge, as both she and her husband are self-confessed ‘health nuts’. The first set of designs matched the brief perfectly. “She listened to everything I wanted. It’s never been so easy to say yes,” Lizzie recalls.
Alexandra’s design kept the mature boundary planting, but brought a gentler, more naturalistic feel to the rest of the garden. She placed the sauna from LayzeeLiving and cold plunge barrel from Brass Monkeys at the back of the garden. “I thought it made sense to be in the corner, away from the house, where you get the morning sun. The clients were happy because that’s where they imagined using it the most,” she says. To house the sauna, she created a platform made from Millboard composite decking, which is less slippery than wood; a concern because of the tree coverage. There is also a Hay lounge sofa in this area with a matching ottoman for towels. “I wanted to create an intentional space beside the sauna with somewhere to put your stuff down and sit afterwards with a cool drink,” Alexandra adds.
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To reach this wellness area from the newly laid limestone terrace next to the house, you pad across limestone stepping stones laid in self-binding gravel, through a wildflower meadow surrounded by planted flowerbeds. “For this garden I wanted the hard material to feel smooth underfoot. You don’t always want to be wearing flip flops,” says Alexandra. “We planted a few thymes in the gravel, with the idea that they will release their beautiful scent when brushing past.”
In small gardens, you need to be careful about how many elements you’re including, otherwise it can all look a bit chaotic
The meadow, laid using the Purple Haze mix turf from Pictorial Meadows, brings colour later in the season, before the couple’s gardener (who comes in four hours a fortnight in the summer) cuts it back. Lizzie originally planned to look after their new garden herself, but, she confesses, “I’d never had a gardener before, but it was just so beautiful. I was terrified that in two years’ time it would look a shambles, so I asked Alexandra for her advice and she recommended a gardener.”
It is in the height of summer that the meadow is at its best. “Whether you’re walking through it or whether you’re just looking at it, it’s so rich, but it has movement. We’ve always had birds in the garden, but we’ve never had so many insects and butterflies,” says Lizzie.
“I wanted to bring in this wild aesthetic, so when you’re sitting in the cold plunge, the space feels as planted as possible,” says Alexandra. The meadow also helps the garden room to recede. “In small gardens, you need to be careful about how many elements you’re including, otherwise it can all look a bit chaotic and like too many things up against each other.”
For this garden I wanted the hard material to feel smooth underfoot. You don’t always want to be wearing flip flops
At other times of year, when the meadow has been cut back, the perennial planting beds come into their own. Alexandra planned these to work across the seasons, with grasses including Calamagrostis x acutiflora ‘Karl Foerster’ and Miscanthus sinensis ‘Ferner Osten’, as well as three different daphnes for scent, and geraniums, Bistorta amplexicaulis ‘Alba’, anemones and Heuchera villosa var. macrorhiza
providing naturalistic florals, and architectural flowerheads in winter. In shady areas, she used Fatsia polycarpa ‘Green Fingers’ as well as Polystichum ferns and Euphorbia amygdaloides var. robbiae, planting in clumps throughout.
The planting is also drought tolerant. Alexandra recommends to her clients that they irrigate a garden in its first year and installed a leaky pipe irrigation system in the garden for that purpose. “I always say it’s not something you need long term. After a couple of years, it should all be fine and of course you don’t need to irrigate the meadow,” she explains.
After an initial problem with foxes, including a ‘humdinger’ with the owners’ dog in the meadow, they also fitted fox-proof grilles around the garden room and boundaries. Having reached a point where they were hardly using the garden, the clients are now out there all year round, drinking morning coffee on the deck or enjoying the afternoon sun on the limestone terrace. “My husband cold plunges almost every morning,” says Lizzie, “whether it’s winter and it’s dark and the lights are on, or it’s summer and he’s meandering along the path with the dogs following him.
In brief: What An urban garden surrounded by mature planting and borrowed views. Where West London. Size Approximately 12m x 12m. Soil Typical London clay. Aspect Southwest-facing. Hardiness zone USDA 9a. Designed by Alexandra Noble Design alexandranoble.com
