Luxury Landscaping: Elevating Outdoor Spaces to Match Your Home

We have invited Catriona Stiles, Garden Designer to share her thoughts and insights on just how luxury landscaping can make a difference to your dream home design.

"Having a well-designed connection between your house and garden can elevate your home, improve the appeal of the whole property and give a sense of place. The following elements are some to consider and design into your scheme.

Connection to Nature

The amazing privilege of having an outside space is the opportunity to have your own private, personal space, to enjoy and connect to nature. If you have been working inside or felt stressed from a hectic modern life you need the garden to entice you outside. Research shows that just 3-5 minutes looking at natural, green space can improve your blood pressure, reduce anxiety and help relaxation. Good design will pull you outside to explore your garden.

Views from inside the house

When you are sitting inside you want to have beautiful views of the garden, framed by windows or doors. Bringing planting as close as possible to the house is a sign of good garden design (in my humble opinion). If you have invested in large glass windows and doors you want to be rewarded with views of green, colour and variation through the seasons. Having large patios, right outside your doors, can lead to a view of hard landscaping (a harsh horizontal line) inevitably interrupted by garden furniture. By having the main seating/entertaining areas offset slightly to glass openings you avoid this and start to create flow and interest of going into the garden.

Aligning Interior and Exterior Materials

Your interior flooring and exterior hard landscaping want to work together, whether that be a similar style, colour pallet or could be the same. The direction of your flooring inside needs to lead your eye to the garden. Herringbone, or linear lines heading towards the garden will provide an easy sightline to outside. Horizontal lines across the width of the house will draw you to the walls of the house and make it a less easy transition.

If you have interior accent colours, shapes or materials, continuing the use of these outside creates a connection through repetition.

Creating a Destination

Your outdoor space should entice you to enjoy your whole garden, not just the part next to the house. Creating flexible spaces, through the garden, for seating, play, yoga, coffee, and a G&T will you give places to relax and enjoy your garden with sun/shade and alternative viewpoints.

Planting Design

There is an art in successful planting design, not only in the right plant in the right place but combinations of planting that give interest all year round. Planting borders need depth to provide tiers of planting, creating privacy, softening boundaries and creating a natural hug of planting.

Hard landscaping looks its best when set off with soft planting with scent, texture and colour. Specimen shrubs and trees are fantastic in creating focal points within the garden. Repetition of planting schemes in differing areas of the garden creates flow and creates a garden that has the look of being designed professionally.

In summary, there is an art in bringing together your house and garden to make them sit comfortably with each other and combining the natural elements of beautiful planting. Getting these right can have an amazing effect on the look of your outdoor space and how you connect with it."

Catriona is currently working with us on design concepts in Surrey and the Home Counties. Get in touch to find out more about our luxury landscaping services at Signature Build.

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Photos from our recent Surbiton project, working with HollandGreen Architecture, Interiors & Landscapes, ?? walpole-photography.co.uk.