Wildlife-friendly woodland walk
This wildlife-friendly woodland walk not only provides habitat for a range of insects, birds and small mammals, its vibrant winter colours are also an invitation to engage with the garden in the colder months.
Author: Jean-Yves Gilg
Law magazine editor turned garden designer, occasional ski instructor, and sometimes potter
Poolside border for year-round interest
A low-maintenance, high-impact planting scheme for a poolside bed in the Suffolk borders, with drought-tolerant plants and year-round interest.
Luberon-inspired resilient garden
A resilient garden inspired by the hills of the Luberon region, in southern France, and designed to cope with warmer summers and less predictable weather changes.
Park Crescent’s ‘Garden in the Clouds’
The Garden in the Clouds, in Park Crescent, is a place for children to dream, to engage with plants and to experience nature.
Delos re-imagined: where the past meets the future
June 2021 – Until last month, the mention of Delos would have taken me back to my childhood history book, with pictures of the avenue of lions illustrating accounts of the Delian league’s flawed aspirations to peace. Now, another image superimposes itself over the old one: that of the Priest’s House, in Sissinghurst, overlooking Dan Pearson’s new magical interpretation of Vita Sackville-West’s and Harold Nicolson’s original vision for their Delos garden.
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Bringing New Zealand to Islington
This new planting scheme for a garden in Islington is a tale of two hemispheres, on two counts. First, although it is based in North London, it incorporates a range of plants native to New Zealand, where the owners spent their childhood. Second, it also has two distinct environments: one side faces south, it is sunny and warm, with well-drained soil, while the other faces north, is in the shade, and the soil remains reliably moist.
‘Space for people’ front garden
A low-maintenance gravel garden with simple lines for the front of an angular 1950s brick house located at the end of a quiet cul-de-sac. Generous planting softens boundaries, increases kerb appeal, and turns a space that was once a mere access route into one where the owners and their visitors might linger.
Potager Colbert: rebirth of a lost kitchen garden
When a digger nearly fell over the high retaining wall overlooking the overgrown dell just down from the main front garden, the new owners of Chateau Colbert realised there could be more to the long, unkempt site on the western side of the estate.
Mickael Vincent, head gardener at the Potager Colbert, who is taking me around the garden on a bright morning in late August, says earlier plans showed there had been a kitchen garden here, but that before that incident in 2012, there were few signs left of its former glory.
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North London modernist garden
A garden for a young professional couple in North London, who commute into the city every day and enjoy their outdoor space but have little time to look after it.
The Savill garden: redefining the winter frontier
January 2020 – Winter was once the final frontier for garden folks. The cold season just meant leafless shrubs, perennials cut back to the ground, and muddy borders. Of course you could always count on holly, yew and various conifers for greenery and structure. The odd Christmas rose would bring a bit of colour until the first snowdrops popped up, along with winter aconites, followed by crocuses heralding the imminence of spring and a return to floriferous times. But mostly, in winter, gardens went into hibernation.
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GILG GARDEN DESIGN 