Mill House

Within the idyllic setting of a former mill and house in Surrey, we found a series of fragmented gardens and the old mill race overgrown with Rhododendrons, Bamboos and other invasive species.

Tasked with creating a unified landscape design, we created a formalised planting scheme and herb garden at the front of the house, introduced ‘instant’ Box hedging and pleached Hornbeam to create privacy from a public Bridleway. To the rear, we designed a new croquet lawn, framed by herbaceous borders, together with a series of further garden rooms, culminating in a new, partially, walled productive garden, complete with glasshouse and elegant fruit cages.

The unsightly and invasive planting, obscuring both the mill race and lovely views back towards the house, was removed and the steep, brick sides were naturalised by fronting them with coir rolls seeded with native marginal plants. The aim was to create a more naturalistic effect and enhance the interest and wildlife value of this man-made watercourse.

A new decorative timber bridge was introduced to provide a crossing point to the gardens on the other side of the watercourse and to focus views from the productive garden through to a new wetland meadow. This new bridge has enabled a complete route around the garden that previously did not exist.

Finally, working with Natural England, a silted-up carrier has been restored to provide a trout-spawning stream, together with a fish pass to connect the two watercourses.