Rowland Byass – Landscape Architect

Location: Clerkenwell, London

Planting design for the communal courtyard garden of a new development of four houses in central London.

The courtyard is bounded by high brick walls, a relic of the site’s former use as a factory. In the central area, pleached hornbeam and cubes of clipped box echo the boxy architectural forms of the new building, softened with blocks of Miscanthus grass. At one end, a semi-private garden uses some of the same plants in more organic forms. A central ‘dry riverbed’ of rounded pebbles is surrounded by sweeps of low ground cover, planted with Japanese maples (Acer palmatum ‘Senkaki’), and surrounded by multi-stemmed native silver Birch (Betula pendula). Now nearly mature, this formerly silent courtyard is alive with birdsong in the summer.