How A Sloped Garden Is The Perfect Opportunity To Get Creative

Many people think that a super flat garden is the nirvana of starting points, but if a garden full of interesting aspects and features is what you’d love, the evenness of the garden can actually be a bland canvas. Our gardens serve so many more purposes than we realise. We could write a whole piece easily on the emotional benefits of your garden! They are a haven to escape to the world from – de-stress. They’re full of sensory invitations – a flower to smell, a grass to feel, the rustles of plants in a breeze etc. We won’t go on…

But they’re also a huge invitation to get more sociable within. Without fail, we see that people who invest in their gardens, enjoy them more and invite others into them more often too. And after the lockdown we’re slowly coming out of, we all know how valuable this is.

Creating An Interesting Patio Area

When we start a project which will involve a patio or decked area, one of the first things we do is to check the levels. Even a fairly flat garden can present a slope when you project how far the flat patio will span into the garden.

This can be used as a great opportunity to make the patio one of the main features of the garden. In the video this week you can see how our first garden only had a very subtle taper, but using that to our advantage meant we could almost turn it into the ‘stage’ of the garden. Our clients are very sociable, so an area they could entertain was always going to be a priority.

By creating just a couple of steps down into the garden, it literally adds another layer of interest to the patio. You’ll see the hot tub was also slightly sunken too which brings the height of the tub closer to ground level. It’s only subtle, but touches like this mean that when you’re all using the garden together, it’s far more inclusive and sociable.

Using Your Degrees For Separation

If you’re familiar with the term, ‘Six Degrees of Separation’ you’ll chuckle at the irony of this one. The idea is that you’re only ever six connections away from anyone on the planet.

Sometimes you want to escape all of that though. As you can see from the picture above, this garden is a sunken haven, where the client is significantly overlooked all around his garden. Every direction has houses around him. He was also clueless on how he could transform the heavy slope of his garden into something he could enjoy. After renovating his home, he’d said he’d left the garden to last as he was dreading it – so many of us do that!

He had a significant list of features he wanted to incorporate, but couldn’t visualise how it could all come together – a kitchen and barbeque area, a firepit, a patio… By combining the clients’ practical requests with the need for privacy, we could create a social aspect in the garden which was extremely private as it was so much lower than the rest of the garden.

The retaining wall was the key here to provide the structure and support for the ground levels we wanted to achieve.

We could then introduce tiering around the garden to add the other points of interest and features. Being clever with the features such as the roof on the kitchen area, not only were we covering up the cooking area, but we had strategically positioned it to block the views from some of the overlooking properties.  This shows the importance of well planned and creative garden design

Need a more useable garden space to enjoy? Call our design team today on 0116 210 0760 to discuss your options with us.