New planting and patio, north London

Not all projects redesign the garden from scratch. This north London garden just needed a refresh. The new paving, steps and paths were installed by Graham Thompson of Creative Landscapes London.

The new planting by The Urban Hedgerow is designed to integrate with existing plants such as the dramatic irises and bring bold shapes and year-round colour to this secluded garden.

The garden is generally in partial shade with the surrounding trees, but with some sunny hot spots. We planted dahlias and agapanthus in the brightest spaces and surrounded them with more dappled shade-tolerant
specimens such as Paeonia ‘Bowl of Beauty’, the bright magenta flowers of Lychnis coronaria and snowy-white Allium ‘Mount Everest’.

We added informal edging to the beds with Nepeta ‘Six Hills Giant’ for that hazy lavender colour but with a plant rather more tolerant of clay soil. The dahlias provided spotlights of late summer colour, with Penstemon
‘Blackbird’, ‘Alice Hindley’ and ‘Sour Grapes’ adding a background palette.

The new Hit And Miss fence, supplied by Jacksons Fencing and installed by Creative Landscapes, provides an attractive backdrop and an ideal framework for climbers – we planted Clematis ‘Piilu’ towards the rear of the garden and C. ‘Remembrance’ behind the irises. A Trachelospermum jasminoides brings scent and white starry flowers to the fence opposite.