An Urban Oasis, Chiswick

The brief for this project was to turn a small, very much unloved and overgrown courtyard garden in Chiswick into a welcoming space for relaxing, sitting out and dining. The garden leads off from the kitchen of the house, which had recently been re-designed. We worked with the client and her interior designer on a tight timeframe to achieve this urban oasis.

In any small garden, there are some essential design principles: ensure that you design ‘big’ – in other words create fewer generous spaces but do them beautifully; ensure the zoning and flow between zones is well considered; concentrate on lovely detailing with the best quality materials; hide the vertical spaces (i.e the walls) with dark, small-leafed planting as that will create an impression of infinity at the boundaries; and lastly work with the senses – water, fire, scent, plants that move in the wind.

With this in mind, we used split levels to form a seating spot outside the kitchen doors with a generous planting bed for a feature acer tree, then dropping down into the main area which features l-shaped seating in the sunniest spot around a fire bowl, a bespoke pergola with table underneath beside a trough water feature and barbecue area. We used a combination of clay stackers, yorkstone pavers and steps and corten edging to keep the tones fairly muted but provide patterning on the floors. The existing fencing was replaced with good-quality cedar which we are training climbers up. The planting palette is simple in colour with strong evergreen structure and scent. We designed a lighting scheme to ensure the garden is a pleasure to be in at night – and importantly to view at night from the kitchen.

Images show the garden newly built (more images to follow later in 2025) and a view of what it looked like before!