LONG, THIN GARDEN DESIGN

CAMBRIDGE, CAMBRIDGESHIRE

I appologise for the poor quality of this image but, due to my ineptitude at making working copies of files before changing to a new computer, I lost a few years worth of photographs. What I have put here is scanned from a rather dirty and battered print which is the only image I have of this project. However I thought it worth including as it is a good example of what can be done with a very narrow, very long garden.

The total width of this garden is less than 5 metres. When I first saw it there was a hedge along the right hand side that reduced to width to about 3.5 metres and it is nearly 30 metres long. I have used the diamond shapes to lead the viewers eye right out to the boundaries on either side, thus making use of the gardens entire width. The resulting triangles allow for reasonably deep planting and combine to give the garden an appearance of greater width.

The garden is divided by a pergola and beyond that is a very informal orchard garden which makes the most of the apple trees that were there. The trees were heavily pruned to restore some shape, structure and vitality to them. On the ground I planted bulbs and informal , naturalistic plants such as foxgloves and primrose.

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