contemporary courtyard design

a front garden in the Scottish borders

A contemporary garden design project in the Scottish Borders with bespoke lighting sculptures, a modern water feature with stepping stones and rusted steel spills, handcut caithness stone paving, pleached trees and a carpet of perennial planting.

Our clients had moved into their new home in the Scottish Borders, a recently renovated traditional stone steading.

They commissioned us to redesign their front garden and create a courtyard space with a 'wow' factor.

One major problem our clients were experiencing was that visitors were mistakenly using their kitchen door as the main entrance so we began by installing a side gate and creating an obvious route to the front door, a dynamic caithness stone path set into the circular cobbled patio area.

A series of four rusted corten steel light sculptures were commissioned from Edinburgh artist Andrea Geile. They are patterned with her signature cut leaf designs and light up at night.

In winter they provide structure and in Spring, summer and autumn they are surrounded and softened by lush planting.
The pond creates a focus from inside the house as well as a home to our clients’ fish.

Bespoke steel spills compliment the design of the sculptural lighting pillars.

Thick hand cut caithness stepping stones lead over the contemporary sunken pond to the back gate.

We created an architectural planting scheme with pleached trees and structural blocks of clipped hedging interspersed with a carpet of semi-shade loving flowering perennials.

We also commissioned a bespoke lighting column with the house number cut into it to match Andrea's other pieces.

before & design

The finished effect is a contemporary garden which perfectly compliments the traditional steading.