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15Jul, 2023

A Norfolk Coastal Garden in Gorleston

  • By Richard Walters
  • 15 Jul 2023
  • Projects

A Norfolk Coastal Garden

Visiting previous Clients and seeing how their gardens are looking is one of the pleasures of a garden designer’s life.  For this Norfolk coastal garden, very close to the sea, I designed an informal Mediterranean style garden. The oval lawn was surrounded by a path bordered with grasses and light and airy perennials.

I visited the Client, Penny, after the garden had been in for over a year  I was gratified to see how well Penny was taking care of the garden and how much enjoyment it was giving.

Raised beds with trailing Erigeron, Rosemary and Campanula.
The new oval lawn was surrounded with grasses, Salvia, Verbena and Gaura.

Site Survey and ongoing works

The garden was a rather uninspiring lawn with an overgrown border.  Penny was keen on raised beds for practical reasons, whilst still retaining some lawn.

My design included an oval lawn, with raised beds planted up with a variety of plants suitable for a mediterranean coastal garden. The path was made of compressed Breedon gravel. I included a strip of loose gravel overlying soil either side. This allows for grassses and perennials to grow up either side.  The lawn was slightly raised above the path and was edged with 3mm metal edge.

The rather uninspiring view from the house showing typical tired lawn surrounded by mixed borders.
To create the path around the lawn we laid hardcore with a sand screed before compacting Breedon gravel

Work in progress

After digging up the whole garden and rotavating the soil, my colleague, Matt and I got started on the transformation.  Firtly we built the raised beds, laid the new lawn and then planted up the beds and path borders.  There was a rather shady north facing border at the end of the garden which look great with plants like Mahonia, Fatsia, Pieris ‘Flaming Silver’, Sarcococca confusa and Skimmia.  We also had an Acer in semi shade and a lovely x Fatshedera ‘Annemieke’ to brighten up the dark fence.

The newly installed garden, planted up with plants guaranteed to thrive in the conditions
The paths were designed to have plants either side. We only compacted the gravel in the middle, with loose gravel on the sides to allow for plants.
The garden a year on looking very nice. The plants are all looking good (although the grasses have just flopped recently) and the raised beds have settled in well.

Wildife Friendly Planting

This was a very pleasing project overall with the garden looking great thanks to lots of hard work by the Client.  Penny told me that the garden is always full of bees and butterflies in the day and moths in the evening and night time.  I will look forward to seeing how Penny looks after the garden in the future.

Richard Walters 2023

Should your require assistance with your own grand design, or just a garden revamp or new mixed border, feel free to email or ring me (07801 252 972) for more information or an informal discussion about your requirements.

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