New Arts and Crafts House

Located within the Surrey Hills, in an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB), lies this Arts and Crafts style house built towards the end of the last century.

On first visiting the property, the driveway approach was rather narrow and cramped, whilst the area to the front of the house felt quite stark and uninspiring.

Our design creates a softer approach to the house and a more welcoming front garden, to help settle the building into its surroundings. We reclaimed much of the large gravel area, adding new lawns and planting, whilst preserving the formal pond that the clients loved so much, making it now feel very much part of its new landscape. The new layout encourages cars to park away from the front façade of the house, whilst a new path leads to a clearly defined front door.

The garden at the back of the house drops steeply away, making the house feel as though it is perched on the brow of a hill, with the existing terraces feeling disjointed. The existing swimming pool and recently built pool house felt detached from the house and garden, whilst steps from the terraces led to a sloping lawn, leaving much of the garden feeling inaccessible and unusable.

Our Master Plan creates a cohesive design that makes use of the whole garden. We have focussed upon creating garden rooms and unifying the different spaces within the garden, to create a sense of connection between the buildings and surrounding landscape.

The new plan reshapes the main terraces and introduces new retaining walls and steps. Re-grading the levels allows a new large, mid-level lawn to be created, where previously there was just a grass bank. Two further flights of steps through a planted bank, provide a direct route towards the lower garden and existing lake. The steps themselves also form an important central axis from the house, directing views and creating a sense of harmony between the different garden areas.

The design also includes a pool garden.

Planting includes clipped Box parterres, evergreen Yew hedging to define various garden rooms and small, multi stem and standard fruit trees for seasonal interest. Billowing, scented planting will fill the borders to create a softness and give a timeless feel.

The driveway and front areas are now complete and will be planted this Autumn.