Scottish wild garden

A wild garden inspired by roadside verges and natural spaces with native wild flowers, tangled grasses, a wildlife pool and a boardwalk leading to a rustic deck overlooking the surrounding hills.

We were asked to create a garden which looked as if it were never been gardened, an unkempt space verging on the wild.
 
Inspired by our clients’ love of the British countryside we drew inspiration from native plant habitats, particularly the planting of roadside verges and edgelands where flowering plants emerge through long grasses.

The planting design is styled from a conceptual idea of native wild planting. We have allowed the grass to grow long and have sown and planted a combination of native wildflowers and near-native perennials. We have also introduced a mixture of shrubs and trees.

The existing garden was steeply banked, relentlessly wet and hemmed in by an old damaged retaining brick wall which made the space outside the patio doors feel very cramped.
 
We immediately began by cutting the wall back on the left hand side to create a small limestone patio. We created a large boulder wall full of planting pockets and a new set of curving steps. These open up the space and add a focus from the window.

We removed the old patio at the top of the steps and introduced a wooden boardwalk leading through a wetland wild flower meadow, past a wildlife pond to a rustic rough-hewn raised deck overlooking the surrounding hills.

The end result is a garden imbued with memories of wild spaces.
 
We ran a regular maintenance programme for this garden in its first few years to carefully establish and manage the delicate balance inherent in this style of planting design.