Commanding a spectacular position over the rugged North Cornwall coast moulded into a south-facing slope, the house replaces a former farm, set within an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. The building was sensitively designed balancing playful and dramatic volumes with the careful use of local materials. I was delighted to be asked to help with the design of the surrounding garden and land to ensure the house felt better connected and embedded within the landscape.

The clients wanted a useable family space for entertaining and holidays, incorporating a productive garden for fruit, vegetables, and cut flowers. The intention was to design a beautiful garden that married the juxtaposition between the modernist architecture and natural landscape.

Working with existing levels, we designed a series of ha-ha’s rippling out from the house into the landscape beyond, brining the steep topography into a useable framework. Surrounding the house, a simple planting palette was selected based on salt tolerant characteristics and tones which pick up on the distant colours of the sea. Frothy planting helps soften the lines of the architecture, and clipped Phillyrea, Elaeagnus, and Viburnum have been chosen to reflect organic forms in the landscape. A vegetable and cut flower garden has been incorporated through a series of terraces, with good soil orientated to capture the sun, which lead out to an orchard beyond. A previously cleared woodland area has been planted as a hazel coppice, bulbs, ferns - subtle planting interventions to enhance what exists and creating a lush green place buzzing with wildlife.