For almost 30 years, the gardens at Manor Farmhouse, Patney, were both a working laboratory and a showcase for Michael Balston’s work, and were widely featured in the gardening press. They were developed whilst it was his family home and provided an essential aid in learning the practicalities of garden design, planting and management.

Soil, aspect, view and micro-climates were exploited to the full. A vast range of plants were grown in a coherent layout, set to delight throughout the year. Both traditional and modern materials were used, imparting a distinct character to each area.

Designed to a firm rationale that was sympathetic to the genius of the place, the garden was an inspiration to clients, visitors and staff alike.

Patney

The East Village show garden, designed by Michael Balston and Marie-Louise Agius, and sponsored by Delancey, won a Gold Medal at the 2013 RHS Centenary Chelsea Flower Show.

Named after the first residential legacy to result from the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games, the East Village Garden brought the East to the West with a magnificent garden to celebrate the birth of London’s newest neighbourhood.

Taking inspiration directly from the history, form and ethos of East Village, Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park and the surrounding Lea Valley area, it celebrated the creation and delivery of London’s ‘Legacy Promise’– a neighbourhood which offers the best of city living but with the luxury of vast amounts of open space and spacious private balconies for all its residents.

The garden had an urban feel, characterised by materials including timber, glass and steel which resonated with the contemporary design and construction of the East Village neighbourhood. It was surrounded by an abstract ‘urban wall’ to create the sense of a city. However, the garden was also heavily plant orientated, filled with drifts of herbaceous plants, shrub borders and mature trees. This created the juxtaposition of ‘urban’ and ‘green’, which reflected the ethos of London’s newest neighbourhood.

It was based around a series of leaf shaped areas including lawns, a body of water and planting beds through which ran a long, sinuous path. The form not only reflected the curvaceous private and public gardens in East Village but on a wider scale, referenced the new landscape of the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park with its long winding river, meandering banks, wetlands, paths and the curving architecture of the Stadium, Velodrome and Aquatics Centre.

At the rear of the garden was a curved seat within a rising glass back. Contemporary in material and form, it echoed the enclosed vertical glass balconies that are attached to many of the apartments in East Village.

Along the long side was located a chevron shaped deck that extended into the garden giving visitors the impression of being in the garden. Using a glass balustrade, steel uprights and a curved timber roof, the balconies were reminiscent of those at East Village.

RHS Chelsea Flower Show, 2013

This project is a superb example of the house and landscape being developed hand in hand to achieve a well integrated overall scheme. The house sits three quarters of the way up the site in an elevated position with commanding south facing views over the landscape in front, with an established woodland boundary to the west.

The scheme is diverse in content with formal water gardens, a large and informal natural lake in a parkland setting, an historical Victorian swimming pool within a woodland setting, as well as an outdoor swimming pool for family use. The walled garden is fully productive with a glasshouse that has temperature zones for a variety of growing opportunities.The tennis court has a wooden pergola structure, covered in roses, thereby becoming more of a designed architectural feature as opposed to a standard sports pitch.

The landscape is horticulturally varied, with the more formal, intensively planted areas around the house becoming more natural and relaxed in style as you move into the wider landscape.

Landscaping

Digging

Berkshire House

Our association with the owners of this garden has been a long and happy one. It has spanned two private gardens and two hotel gardens with works continuing down the years; creating this garden has truly been a joint effort.

The clients work hard in the garden themselves, and their contribution in terms of ideas has complemented and reinforced our own. It is a model relationship that we believe has produced the best possible result which is reflected in the overall harmony and beauty of the place.

Oxfordshire Manor House

The Practice was delighted to be asked to collaborate with Thomas Heatherwick in the production of a design for the Maggie’s Centre in Leeds.

The site was a tiny island of green on a hill next to a multi-storey car park, surrounded by large buildings with roads on two sides. It presented an opportunity to re-establish a lost landscape, even if only at a miniature scale. The landscape design was generated from the topography, building form, access and views as well as roof usage. The enriching ecology of a native woodland was the prime generator for the overall landscape design and with new planting at both ground level and on the roof, the site has become an oasis in the concrete desert.

The low-key woodland is welcoming, grounding and celebrates the cycle of the seasons. It creates a familiar natural ambience and can give hope to users of the centre as they experience the changing landscape and look forward to what the next season brings.Given the use of the building, it was also important that the design was not high maintenance so the natural planting is able, to some extent, to look after itself.

Maggies, Yorkshire

After the extensive and varied garden at Manor Farmhouse, Patney, Michael’s garden at Alton Barnes brings the challenge of the small space (less than half an acre) and the desire to include a wide range of interesting plants.

It also went through the unexpected evolution of fitting in a wedding with consequent moving of mature pleached limes and much brick-laying. The development of the garden continues with each passing season.

Maslens

The Centenary Garden contains subtle nods to the Rothschild family history and has been planted with a particular focus on mid to late summer. It was planted in an old tennis court, almost at the centre of Exbury Gardens, and was carefully hidden from public view whilst it grew and matured. Now open to visitors, its scores of beautiful shrubs, climbers and perennials provide a peaceful and fragrant spot for the public to explore.

The garden is a contemporary, intimate space, focusing on late flowering summer perennials, interwoven between a strong vertical planted structure, with the existing yew hedging providing an evergreen backdrop. The central area is sunken, enhancing the three dimensional space, with the Rothschild 5 Arrows coat of arms in black Caledonian slate set into York stone paving. At the far end of the garden is a curved timber bench surrounded by cloud-pruned evergreen azaleas, a modern salute to the core history of the Gardens. Just over 2,000 plants have been used. Key structural plants include Gingko – running through the main planting beds; Heptacodium micanoides – the pair of multi-stemmed trees in the far end bed; Hydrangea paniculata ‘Limelight’ – en masse at the far end around the Heptacodium; Rhus typhina ‘Tiger eyes’ – contrasting with the existing Yew in the north-west corner, and Miscanthus ‘Graziella’ – running in swathes between the Gingkos. 

Centenary Garden

This project was an exciting garden scheme for a new house just outside Bath that replaced a group of redundant farm buildings. Lying on the side of a steep hill, there are magnificent views to the south which informed the design.

The three-dimensional geometry is highly complex, requiring considerable terracing. However, this was achieved with minimal disruption to the beautiful existing landscape. A dramatic watercourse was created, consisting of a series of pools and a canal which passes the house before discharging into a large circular mirror pool. 

Hillside Landscape

The RHS COP26 garden demonstrates how horticulture as practised in our gardens, plants and public green spaces can play an integral part in protecting our planet and people, and to ensure a greener more resilient future for us all.
The garden is organized on the basis of a cycle. The circular narrative displays a degraded environment, followed by adaptation to changing conditions. There is then an area showing mitigation techniques which is followed by a balanced selection of plants responding to the higher temperatures and stormier weather that we can expect in generations to come.

The Exhibit attempts to illustrate the complexity of climate change, but has to be selective in what it demonstrates. Many problems such as wind damage or rising sea levels are not alluded to. The benefits of worms in the soil or biological control instead of pesticides are not discussed. And, of course there is much uncertaintity about prognoses for 50 years hence. If the Gulf Stream drifts away, we might achieve a climate of even more violent swings.

Consequently the Exhibit is built around a few concerns, in particular, flooding and insufficient awareness and thoughtful design to allow Society to cope. It also considers a limited range of new plants to help us adapt to rising temperature and difficult weather. It shows some techniques that can be used to mitigate climatic disaster and finally it creates a garden that shows some of the plants that might be commonly seen in 50 years time.

Of course, a great deal is left out and there is a lot of guesswork but here is food for thought.

Inspired by the cyclical nature of both the organic and inorganic world and its systems, the ground plan is derived from 8 intersecting 6m radius circles rotating around the centre of the 20 x20 m exhibit to create a sequence of 18 crescent-shaped spaces or sectors. A sinuous path cuts through to allow public access through the plan and there is a further division at right angles creating a figure of 4 distinct quarters, each representing 4 aspects of climate change – Decline, Adaptation, Mitigation and Balance.

The Ground Plan is firm and helpful in organising a highly complex narrative. The spatial design is more relaxed and creates loose enclosures for each quarter. While each sector is discernible on the ground, the spaces created by the plants frequently cut across the sectors. The planting is used to contain the exhibit and define the spaces. It also characterises the sectors.

RHS Chelsea Flower Show, COP 26

The Grove was a major country house that had fallen into disrepair.It was rescued by Ralph Trustees Ltd who re-invented it as a five-star country house hotelwith conference facilities, leisure club and a major golf course.

The Practice was delighted to be invited to restore and redesign the large, dilapidated gardens. Picking up on the original 18th and 19th Century layouts, we incorporated new axial paths across the re-created formal gardens. This was overlaid with a network of sinuous paths, a stepped canal, a massive herbaceous border and a wide variety of smaller gardens.

Thefour-acre walled garden was redesigned to include a restored greenhouse, a swimming pool, tennis courts, croquet lawn and potager.

The Grove Hotel

This site for this project was originally a farm that had been very poorly maintained. There were considerable planning hoops to jump through which resulted in the house being set at a much lower level than the original property. As such, the challenge was how to site it within the landscape whilst adhering to very tight controls on its location. The site has extraordinary views across the Test Valley and as such, the setting borrows much of the landscape beyond.

Hampshire House

High on rocky cliffs on the coast north of Dublin, the site has breathtaking views over Dublin Bay and on to the Wicklow mountains.

A new house, subject to stringent planning constraints, was designed for the site by Barratt Lloyd Davis and Associates.

Working in close collaboration with the Client and architects, a new garden was designed to complement the house and cope with the difficulties of a steep slope subject to frequent gales.

We were glad to be able to take advantage of this unusually warm location to grow plants which elsewhere in Britain and Ireland are of marginal hardiness.

Irish Bay

A large new country house was built to replace an existing farm complex. It is situated on the south-westerly facing slopes of the Yorkshire Wolds with magnificent views over the River Humber.

The garden responds to the house, which has a classic plan but within a modern form. With complicated level changes to resolve, the design makes use of water extensively in pools and cascades. It includes a series of gardens at different levels with a varied range of horticulture, and there is an extensive kitchen garden.

Balston Agius — Specialist landscape designers and horticulture experts