Landscaping is frequently mistaken as a process that involves adding highly prominent, hard features within your garden like patios & pathways. However, there are a variety of techniques that our team can use to enhance your garden to bring as little disruption to your natural surrounding landscape.
Here at The Oxfordshire Gardener, we believe it’s incredibly important to preserve the unique and natural beauty that is contained within every garden, whilst also creating a cultivated and visionary garden for you to enjoy.
Let us give you a taste of just some of the fascinating hard and soft landscaping features and methods that we use to sculpt gardens into flourishing landscape designs.
The Ha-ha
Ha-ha’s were first installed during the eighteenth century in order to create hidden boundaries, separating herds of farm animals from exquisitely crafted gardens without disturbing divine estate views. These lowered walls are the perfect alternative from fencing as they prevent potential disruption to picturesque views.
If you have a wide expanse of land, installing a ha-ha could be the perfect natural-looking solution for you, providing a sense of invisible separation and depth to your land, without visually interrupting a luxuriant landscape.
Excavating a deep ditch with a sunken vertical stone or brick wall to the garden-side prevents unwanted farm or wildlife from climbing up and into the garden and it’s a natural-looking feature that will correspond beautifully with your garden, creating a sloping yet sophisticated look.
Hedged Gateways & Arches
Including gateways and arches is a thrilling addition to any garden as they both divulge a sense of exploration and enhance the depth of your garden. As well as installing conventional gateways and arches, we often train and prune hedging into entrances and frames for a more natural look.
By intertwining hand-picked climbing plants around metal or wooden arches and arbours, man-made garden features can appear disguised, blending into the garden and protecting the natural scene.
Topiary is another fantastic option, creating living, green sculptures and adding evergreen form throughout the year.
Water Sources
Lucky enough to have a water source within your garden? Carefully chosen aquatic and semi-aquatic plants, selected to suit the surroundings, can lend dreamy lusciousness to a freshwater feature.
Hydrocharis Morsus-Ranae (Frogbit) plants produce pristine white flowers that float delicately on the pond surface. This perennial plant can either float or be immersed under the water and will provide beautiful blooms in the summer months.
Butomus Umbellatus (Flowering Rush) is another stunning pond plant that can be grown on the surrounding area of any garden pond. This tall grass-like plant produces a mesmerising blush petal that will construct a pretty pink framework for your pond.
Nymphaea ‘Attraction’ (Waterlily) is a floating plant that produces a flourishing spiral of deep pink, almost berry-shaded petals that contrast against vivid golden stamens. This captivating waterlily is the ultimate floating flower to revive your stagnant pond.
Climbers
Got a somewhat less than desirable wall that could use some green screening?
Trachelospermum jasminoides (or Star jasmine) is one of our favourites and perfect for this job.
A beautiful climbing plant that produces a gorgeous palette of glossy deep green leaves and pure white petalled flowers. Star jasmine is renowned for its fragrance and upright habit, making it a brilliant climber to rescue any unhappy-looking wall.
Clematis montana is another perennial, climber plant perfect for perking up tired walls. Soft pink petals contrast beautifully against its lime green sternum and emerald leaves. Diffusing a subtle vanilla essence, the Clematis montana is a beautifully fresh flower that can alter the appearance of a tired wall in seconds.
How to Hide Your Bins
Bin storage can be an unattractive element within your garden, but they can be suitable unseen with some well-placed planting.
Daphne ‘Eternal Fragrance’ produces a mass of tiny pink-white flowers that diffuse a sublime scent from April through to October, considerably masking the any less than fragrant odours, as well as blending your bins to sit imperceptibly within your garden.
Discover more about how we work with nature to shape the landscape of your garden.
