Case Study: Japanese Garden, Hove

The Brief

The owner of this garden spends much of her time travelling and wanted a Japanese/ Indonesian garden. It had to be low maintenance and requested plants predominantly to be in pots. The existing screening was to be made darker to contrast the new planting.

The Challenges

The client already had a trellis and patio installed 2 years previous and didn't want to alter this, which is understandable. Normally when designing a garden I look at the garden as a whole, especially small ones like this, to create a good design flow. When designing Japanese gardens it is important not to over plant or add too many features. Japanese have an expression ‘Ma’ which means negative space or pause and I wanted to bring this concept into the garden.

The existing trellis was painted black and the wooden planters I made for the bamboo were blackened with a blow torch which is a Japanese method called Shou Sugi Ban.