A contemporary front drive to suit an elegant new build family home. The architectural concept brings together traditional materials in a nouvelle way, creating a super stylish and contemporary architectural delight. Design and build by Moon Design and Build.

The design for the front garden sought to take inspiration from the architectural language and form a bridge between the house and landscape. We wanted to create a sense of arrival that was stylish, slightly minimalist and understated. Good proportions, good materials and good planting.

The primary surfacing materials we used were a grey clay paver and a buff gravel. For the entrance porch and several detail strips we used a light grey limestone paving. These materials worked really well with the buffs and greys in the Purbeck walling stone and warmer tones of the wood used on the main house.

The planting is naturalistic with a good proportion of structural yew hedging and topiary. The balance between structural evergreen planting and herbaceous flowers and grasses is essential to allow the garden to appear neat, even when the planting is untamed and out of season. A selection of medium-sized multi-stem trees were chosen to reconcile the scale of the house with the landscape, provide an architectural element to the planting and give a bit of screening from the neighbours.

An ‘in-and-out’ driveway gives easy access and use without the need for awkward reversing. Cortes steel retaining walls retain the slope from road level to the house.

The design of this garden was undertaken whilst i was owner and director of Artisan landscapes design studio.