4 Courtyards in 1 - And a Taste of Persia!

[Music] this is the garden of iranian clients of mine who wanted to bring a taste of persia to an english country estate [Music] this is the courtyard garden this is the first garden you see when you arrive here what i love about courtyard gardens is they're very inward looking and then you have the contrast with the spaces outside the courtyard but inside it you feel really protected it's also divided up into different spaces although it appears as one generally you've actually got about four or five different spaces leaving off it so we've got the small eating air with a wonderful fireplace we've got the main drag down the center with water playing and then we've got the little shady area at the end with the tree ferns and then we got the main entrance along the line of the quince trees the overall effect that was wanted was at that of a persian garden and water in a formal will is really essential to that and it really plays and picks up the sunshine and it brings light and movement into the space and i think it's wonderful [Music] [Applause] [Music] we designed lovely big lead bowls which just weathered beautifully and we've made them in quite a contemporary shape so although the classic design of the wheel running down the middle with the central pool we've actually counterbalanced it with quite a modern take on it the architecture all the way around the courtyard is very different we've got some converted barns we've got the big bulk of the manor house feel and then we've got the shooting lodge and the little chapel at the end so we've got different styles of architecture all the way around the yard and i wanted to bring a big unifying present so i brought in these big evergreen oaks and i brought them in when they were six metres high and i was slightly nervous i hadn't used trees that big before of that type and i wasn't sure how easily they transplanted but they went in like gems and they've grown away ever since they are magnificent trees they do feel quite persian to me in a way they're obviously used to take the cork off the outside when you're making corks for wine bottles and things although now they've often been replaced by plastic closures but what i like about them is they've got quite a light evergreen canopy unlike the evergreen oak the english evergreen oil or quercus eyelex it has a very dense evergreen canopy quirky subaru or the pork oak is much lighter and sometimes they look a bit like broccoli the shape of the canopy because they're sort of multi-tiered um bulbous nature of the canopy i never realized when i was much younger how hardy they are but i grow them up with me near stamford lincolnshire and they're absolutely happy and they've been through some really hard winters here these have been in for 12 years and likewise we've had mid winters of minus 15 and they've been absolutely fine they tend to lose their leaves in may especially when they get this size they drop off and then they quickly we go regrow again so that can be a minor disadvantage but i think they're magnificent here they really bring in the feel of something a little bit exotic then i bought the quince trees down to frame the main entrance through and i put those in big baseless acid etch metal containers i love the golden fruit which are hanging on there now which is slowly dropping i think they've got such interest throughout the year they have the wonderful shape in the winter beautiful blossom in early spring and then the leaves come out and they've got that lovely sort of felted green look to the underside and then the golden globes hanging on in the autumn so i think they're a perfect tree i've also got these big laurels either side and they came at a large size and i put those in baseless containers so their root ball is just sat on top of the ground and we've made these wooden slatted containers to go around them which we built in situ around the root ball and now they've rooted through and they don't need any irrigation and they're just clipped to form these restful domes i wanted to divide the main arrival zone because occasionally cars do come in here when there's lots of heavy luggage or packages to unload and so i wanted to semi divide this part from the main driveway in so i did a cloud prune hedge along to divine it and then we introduced big box balls of different sizes and just put them together now i love cloud prune hedges because they you could be a quite a bad clipper of hedges and they still look wonderful they don't have to be uniform they look humpy dumpy quite informal but they've also got a sort of formal slightly structural feel to them if you don't make them by just putting different size balls together you can just get boxed plants of different sizes introduce one or two balls and that also makes a pretty good fairly instant feel it just depends on your budget i have just made them from little cuttings rooted into the ground and they have actually formed a jolly nice hedge within about four or five years they're wonderful and i think it adds winter interest which is all important you do need to have a lot of winter interest in a courtyard garden because you look at it through the glazing on the building and when you're coming and going every day of the year and it needs to look good at least look interesting and it needs to look inviting the roses which we've chosen here rosa mutables i think is a wonderful rose it's growing all the way under the cork oaks and i'm amazed how well it's done in it quite a shady competitive situation rosamutables is lovely because it changes color so the blossom changes through from a sort of yellowy to a tangerine to a reddy color and so it maintained your interest for a long period also it's one of the longest flowering roses of all and it's a great favorite of mine and i keep meaning to get some in my own garden and i still haven't managed it so it's one of the plants on my must-have list and i'm going to get one this autumn the paving is a mix of many different materials but hopefully they form a cohesive hole so on the main entrance in the porphyry sets which are arranged in a very traditional fan pattern here we've got the jorah limestone and this is bedded and and laid with a very tight joint so it's just a three or four millimeter joint so you really don't notice it too much and that makes a much more clean modern look as opposed to the very uneven reclaimed edge of a york stone say which has a much wider joint when you have drainage in these areas you need to have one or two gullies every so often and instead of a usual cast iron drainage gully here we've got a stone with just perforations punched into the top of the stone so it really mixes seamlessly into the paving and that was how gully covers were done many years ago in stone that was quite normal it's much more recently that we've had a lot of iron covers here we're at the far end of the courtyard and it feels totally different to the rest [Music] it's very shady sheltered slightly sunken and the water just plays gently as it trickles over the edge there rather than the big torrent of the central part of the courtyard and as such we've changed the palette of planting to make it feel cooler and calmer we've got these two big figs which came from chelsea and they are in big pots and guess what they're baseless so they're actually all standing on their own roots which go right through below the brick pavious and they fruit prolifically here even though it is quite shady we've got lots of tree ferns in the far end and tree fans love shady protective environments and the taller more mature they are the harder they become and even though it's been really quite cold here we've had winters of minus 15 or so they've actually survived very well although they are wrapped in the winter we've also got japanese aces and japanese aces like very calm sheltered environment they like a much more acidic soil than we have here which is quite alkaline but they seem to thrive very well it always surprises me when a tree grows well and thrives in the situation which the book say it hates and they certainly do love it here so this space feels quite different from the rest of the courtyard and it's lovely to have that facility to actually have the choice of spaces to go to in shade and sun quiet or noisy protected or otherwise and it's a real luxury but even in a small garden you can actually manipulate the microclimate to make it form what you want

Channel: Bunny Guinness

Views: 28,265

Rating: 4.9404469 out of 5

Keywords: bunny guinness, garden design, persian garden, iranian garden, courtyard garden, water in garden, garden paving design, cork oak trees, mature trees, taste of Persia, plants for shade, shady courtyard, figs in pots, baseless pots in garden, tree ferns, courtyard design, roses

Id: DG4Sjw5BsPc

Length: 9min 36sec (576 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 23 2021