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Designing my own gardens

I do love a project! We have moved house several times over the years where we have gutted & redesigned the house & the garden too. It’s fun to design it all but I also really like to put my stamp on a place. Everyone has their own distinctive taste & style & I’m no exception. I thought I’d show you a few of my own gardens I’ve designed & built over the years… Henley on Thames We bought a townhouse right in the centre of Henley as we wanted to be able to walk everywhere & enjoy all that …

Would you like a studio tour?

I work from home here in the Cotswolds & have been lucky enough to build my own studio ( correction! I actually used professional builders!!). We live in a barn conversion & my studio building was originally a Cotswold stone animal shelter when this was all part of the main farm back in the 1800s. It was converted to a double garage 20 years ago but that meant cars had to drive through our courtyard to get there. That was stupid, so we reconfigured it all & connected it via a link extension to the house. We now park cars …

Snowy scenes in the Cotswolds this week

We had a beautiful blanket of snow this week – the first we have had since the garden was built & it looked beautiful! Sadly it’s all gone as I type but I took some photos I’d like to share. We live on the edge of the Cotswolds in a group of converted stone barns that wrap around our new courtyard garden. Every room looks onto it so it has to pay its way…. It does – waking up to this was such a joy! The frozen pool & Cotswold stone wall looking beautiful in the snow I dashed out …

Our own garden is being built at last!

After two years of being here, we have completed the work on the house & finally work has started on the garden. As you can see above, the magnificent Acer globosums arrived on the lorry last week. We were very excited & half the village came out to see what was going on! This is my husband posing for a photo. Here they are awaiting their new home. Aren’t they magnificent? I have loved this variety of tree for many years after seeing them in France in village squares providing shade. I took this photo below in 2014 in Provence …

News in February 2020

2020 has been a great year so far. Firstly I’m very pleased to have been invited to be on The List by House & Garden. It’s a prestigious place to be & I am in impressive company so thank you very much House & Garden! I am also delighted to say I won the annual Houzz Best designer award 2020. It’s wonderful to open an email with exciting news so thank you to everyone at Houzz & all the people who follow my work there. Exciting news on the home front too – After two years of builders knocking our …

A new garden for a barn conversion

I love doing small gardens as they are very satisfying. They are relatively quick to build (I often design very large estates which are implemented over several years in some cases) & the before & after shots are always amazing. With small gardens everything counts & the whole scheme must work throughout the seasons, day & night, back to front & so on. This counts for all gardens of course but more so here as nothing is hidden; I don’t do mini wild flower meadows for example as I don’t believe a small garden can afford such temporary beauty. I …