A WIDER VISION

Landscape designer Chris Beardshaw has created a fresh garden and landscape on ahilly and neglected site in the Cotswolds

- VERONICA PEERLESS

The brief

The owners of this new build in the Cotswolds knew that once their home - an unusual modern house built into a hillside, much of it underground - was designed, they would ask Chris Beardshaw to design the garden. Initially, Chris was approached to create a cottage-style garden in the immediate area around the house (the size of which was set by planning conditions), incorporating some loose-style planting, a dining area and edibles. But the project then evolved to take in the wider 12-acre site.

Previously farmland and orchards, and in an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, the site was home to intact ridge and furrow (traces of the ancient ploughing system), two patches of neglected woodland, a stream, meadows and a long, straight, precipitous track to a derelict cottage and farm buildings. It soon became obvious that the garden would need to flow into the surrounding landscape. Chris ended up also dealing with the trees, hedgerows, meadows, the approach to the house, parking and boundaries, the farm buildings, and routes around the site.

The design

"We were able to look at what the site was demanding," says Chris.

"The solutions almost presented themselves, and I ended up subtly choreographing. No corner of the site was left undisturbed in terms of how we could improve it, or work on what was there.