Front Garden Fruit and Herbs Design

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Design for small suburban front garden.

Featuring:

• Herb Spiral with perennial kitchen herbs (use Rosmarinus prostrate 'Spicata' for the top, as this is dwarfing and trailing in habit)
• Pear, Apple and Plum trees with a fan-trained Cherry 
• Herbaceous planting for cullinary and medicinal uses, for pollinators and other beneficial insect life
• Raspberries, Gooseberries, Blackcurrants, Strawberries and Rhubarb with wild strawberry (fragaria vesca) groundcover
• Rose bed with sorrel, strawberry, garlic-chive (Allium tuberosum) and french sorrel (Rumex acetosa)ground cover

Garden is West-facing (sun coming from the left)

Landscaping stage complete... ready for the plants and trees to go in!

Garden under construction..

mounded beds covered with cardboard and woodchips

nice helping of horse manure... the layers in this bed are original soil, old lawn, cuttings from clearance, cardboard, horse manure, organic soil improver/compost topsoil, straw mulch. into this will be planted the berry bushes and a grouncover of strawberries

the clippings and brush from the initial garden clearance were shredded and piled underneath the new mounded beds - worm food! over time this will break down and be added to the soil.

An image of this garden is featured on an american website gardens.com:

Ecological Garden

This Garden was designed for a client in Oxford. The aim was to mix form with function - at the house-end of the design (south) is mainly a formalised design language gradually molding into a naturalistic style at the North end of the garden. The white rendered walls at the house end are in keeping with the finish of the house, whilst the more wooded northerly end of the garden aims to mimic the surrounding countryside on a micro scale.

The plants chosen were all selected from the local biodiversity index, so they can all be found in the surrounding area. These were combined with a few exceptions and a few fruit and nut providing plants, so there is a slight Forest Garden element in the design.

This garden has now been built, photos to come soon...

Designed and draughted by Marcus Busby and Dario Balboni

Urban Garden Designer of the Year 2005

"utterly invigorating... dynamic and considered..." 

- Diarmuid Gavin

Below is the entry submitted by Marcus Busby and Dario Balboni.

The design was selected amongst the final five finalists and published in Garden Design Journal May 2005.

The scheme was described by judge Diarmuid Gavin as being an "utterly invigorating illustration of a dynamic and considered show plot."

The title for the design competition was "Urban Inspirations." In order to draw inspiration from this title, a wander around London with a sketch book camera was undertaken. Walking along the Southbank looking acroos the Thames River, the homogeny in materials used in contemporary architecture was noted - mainly glass, concrete and some slate, with the occasional bit of sandstone. There were also elements of copper used in either guttering or modern sculptures found outside some office blocks. The design utilised these main urban materials. Something else which became apparent was the sheer multiplicity of perspectives, depths and range. For this reason the design aimed to capture this by playing with perspective - for instance the glass planetrs were designed with irregular sides and tops which distort the conventional 3-dimensional cube. Also the pathways exhibit disappearing vistas of of varying materials, intended to foster alternative and ubexpected perspectives.

Finally the planters were stratified - how soil is layered, with firstly soil, then consumables e.g shoes, watches, cameras, mobile phones, then soil, then planting. The planters were designed to built from transparent material such as perspex or glass, much like a wormery or ant farm in a class room.  The idea behind this was to exhibit the ephemerality of consumables and indeed consumerism itself, for if we ignore her, nature will once again consume our ignorance!

Deck and Water Garden

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Designed by Scott Simon, Draughted by Marcus Busby built by Scott and Marcus.

Location Oxfordshire