Georgian Courtyard Garden Design

The Brief:
To Design a Courtyard Garden for a Georgian Farmhouse, low maintenance and south facing.

Designing a courtyard garden for a Georgian farmhouse requires balance between elegance and practicality. Georgian architecture is known for it's symmetry, proportion, restraint and repetition. The garden must therefore follow suit. Structured planting following a clear central axis, softened with layers of herbaceous perennials & seasonal colour to bring warmth & movement. Even when the planting becomes soft, the underlying geometry should feel disciplined.

The Design
The layout was split into 3 areas - the Courtyard Border, the Long Border and the Kitchen Border. The idea being that the Courtyard border is more formal leading to a relaxed Kitchen Border, but all linked through theme and style.

Starting with a nod to Georgian repetition, we created a structure of evergreen Buxus Topiary Balls, Half Standard Bay Trees and formal Buxus low hedging repeated continuously throughout the design. To echo the farmhouse and country setting, we added looser perennials and gentle textural grasses. The colour palette changes from cool blues along the Long Border to a more cottage feel pink palette in the Kitchen Border.

Key Considerations:

South Facing Site - plants need to be drought tolerant,.

Low Maintenance - a busy family with limited gardening knowledge.

Decide on focal points - Topiary standards & Buxus balls for formality.

Seasonality - bulbs for early colour, evergreen for year round, summer perennials.