An established back garden reorganised around everyday family life, with a generous lawn, productive beds and a brick terrace that belongs to the house.
The situation
The garden already had its best feature: a mature apple tree that had shaded the back lawn for decades. Around it, the space had become a collection of separate parts. A narrow deck sat above the lawn, the vegetable beds were difficult to reach in winter, and the route from the kitchen ended at a set of steep temporary steps.
The owners wanted a garden that could carry ordinary family life without looking organised around children. That meant open ground for play, a table close to the kitchen, productive planting that was easy to tend, and enough structure for the garden to remain convincing through winter.
What we did
We treated the apple tree and the kitchen threshold as the two fixed points. A recycled-clay-brick terrace now runs the length of the rear elevation, set low enough to make the step from the house comfortable and broad enough to take a dining table beneath a simple timber pergola. The brick continues as narrow paths, linking the terrace to the productive beds without dividing the lawn.
The central lawn was kept deliberately plain and rectangular. Its edges do more of the design work: clipped evergreen forms hold the structure, while grasses, pale hydrangeas and small perennials loosen the planting beneath the apple canopy. Raised timber beds sit within the ornamental planting rather than behind a separate utility screen.
Materials were selected to improve with use. The brick varies in tone, the pergola can weather naturally, and the planting is robust enough to recover from balls, barrows and a Christchurch winter. A seasonal care programme focuses on pruning the fruit trees, resetting the clipped forms and keeping the productive beds in rotation.
The result
The garden now works as one connected piece of ground. From the kitchen, the terrace, lawn and productive beds can all be seen and reached without a change of direction, while the retained apple tree gives the new work the maturity it could not have gained through planting alone.
There is still plenty happening at the edges, but the centre remains open. That balance lets the family use the garden hard without the landscape losing its composure, and gives the house a useful outdoor room from the first dry afternoon of spring through to the end of autumn.
From the build
