Knot Garden

Traditional Knot Garden Overlooking Courtyard

Category: Contemporary, Modern & Artistic

Garden Design Project: CONOGC001

Creating a Knot Garden was the client brief by landscape an existing level garden comprising summer bedding to a more lasting, elegant, low maintenance solution.

Dividing the area over three gently descending levels, we implemented a running fountain water feature on the top level servicing a central rill, intersected at intervals by silvered oak bridges. A traditional knot garden using gold and green box and half standard scented Elaeagnus was designed to set off each level that would provide appealing views from all levels of the room overlooking the courtyard. Originally a Lutyens House, it would appear from our research that Ms. Sackville West was disappointingly and unusually absent from the garden layout, thus we installed brick and gravel paths that are lightly reminiscent of her design ethos.

Arch

It is always critical and often difficult to match existing stone or brick work to old existing landscaping, so it is worth spending time to source the right materials. This arch that led into the courtyard had to be taken down in order to get heavy plant through to landscape the garden. As you can see, it was rebuilt and a blind man on a galloping horse would have difficulty in detecting which is the old brick work and which is new. This is all down to the skill of the builder and providing him with the right stone so that you end up with a seamless reconstruction.

Winkworth Rill to Wall

In the realization of the landscaping design, it is essential to employ a really skilled workforce and specialist trades to get the best results. You are only as good as the people you employ so that when a project comes off flat paper onto ground contours the design is the best it can be. Without this skilled workforce, none of our designs would be achievable, particularly when creating a complex design such as a knot garden.

Winkworth Rill When building the rill we had the same challenge of matching the retaining walls to existing Bargate stone. All the existing brick walls were taken down and rebuilt with near-matching stone, so the overall effect when the garden was finished was that these walls had been in situ for fifty years or more.

Aerial View of Knot Garden

We were very successful in replicating the original hard landscaping and it has the added bonus of ageing the garden down immediately, whilst waiting for the plants in the flower beds to mature.