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designing-gardens.co.uk
Microsoft SoGo Garden
Designer: Lizzie Taylor and Dawn Isaac
Sponsor: Microsoft
Contractor: Darren Thornton, Acacia Landscapes
With remote and flexible working on the increase, this design shows how the garden can become a place of creativity and productivity for the modern worker. The main colour palette for the planting is lime green, deep maroon and orange.
Wireless connectivity, combined with a custom-built work pod allows the garden to be used as a micro office, giving a whole new dimension to working from home. In the evening it becomes a place to entertain, with lighting and furniture offering a new take on the same space.
A dramatic open-sided steel pod forms the central focus of the garden, with an integrated chair and table, which swivels to give 360-degree views of the garden and provides a functional workspace to use a wireless computer.
Enveloped by a wave of brushed steel that forms an internal boundary with view holes offering different framed pictures of spectacular planting, the pod also has water running around it in a rill that begins and ends at either side of the steel wall. Thousands of tiny bubbles jet into the rill from high-pressure pumps.
Using vividly contrasting plants to stimulate the working environment, deep purple provides a backdrop to acid green and orange highlights. Key structural plants include Cotinus coggygria ‘Royal Purple’ and Cornus alba ‘Aurea’ which provide contrast to Phormium ‘Yellow Wave’ and P. ‘Dusky Chief’.