Residential Home Garden Redesign

This design project was to produce improvement plans for a residential home courtyard garden. I found it initially quite tricky, largely because coming from a much more commercial experience, I was not used to working with a domestic client who I think was expecting a bit more of what you see on tv ‘designer’ types with associated immediate design solutions (blame those ‘instant’ design TV shows such as Groundforce etc).

The first stage of the project was to rectify a lack of clear brief by (very moderate) critical analysis of the current design. Concept proposals were then made from this and sent to the client. The budget was very small, but made slightly more workable via construction by the inhouse gardener and with the aim of reusing most of the existing materials. No survey plans were available, so I undertook the survey, alongside extensive notes and photos, as well as later satellite mapping.

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The concept design proposals incorporated several ways to increase quality and usability of the central garden areas. Particularly this included a central social and interest focus, much increased seating provision and more efficient and interesting spatial structure. Unfortunately, the client was not able to build these proposals. As I found out later, the budget was kind of ‘in theory’, depending on what head office say. The folks did get some nice new seats though, so there was a happy ending.