Home Group

North East England @ Home

Northeast @ Home

Designers: Penny Denoon, John Carmichael
Contractor: Landscape Management Services
Sponsors: Home Group, One Northeast

The North East England @ Home garden is designed as a communal garden that retains an element of privacy. It is simple, but stylish, sustainable, but not boring.

A building façade represents a ground floor apartment and stairs leading to a first floor apartment with balcony. A reclaimed timber deck is a private area for the ground floor apartment. Steps lead from the deck to the communal area.

A Perspex vegetable planter is located between the deck and the communal area, which is surfaced with a permeable resin ground aggregate that allows rainwater to disperse into the ground. Stainless steel banding links the first floor balcony with the rest of the garden, and provides a continuation of the circular design of the garden layout.

The planting creates soft semi-barriers to provide privacy, but also to delineate the different areas of the garden. The rear area structure is created with pine and birch, with underplanting of white, shade-loving perennials and ferns. Open barriers to the sides of the garden are created using mature Crataegus hedging and multi-stemmed Malus, underplanted with yellow perennials and grasses. The open areas of the garden are planted with blue and grey sun-loving perennials and grasses, interplanted with structural shrubs and focal specimen plants.

Roof rainwater can be collected and transported along a cobble-filled rill that leads to a rainwater reservoir located underneath the Perspex vegetable planter. Stored water is used to irrigate the vegetables. Any fast flow water is pulsed over the edge of the deck to be collected in the same reservoir, while also creating a water feature.