It can be a quandry when you’re looking for a brand new garden for entertaining friends, and you also have small children who just want to play! Do you go all-out with play equipment and sacrifice grown-up pursuits until the children are older? Or is it better to make a garden that works for entertaining and make sure that you have a large-enough lawn space for the kids to run around?
Built-in lounge seating
With a bit of help from some of the newly-designed play options that are available, and clever design you can have a garden that is both beautiful and grown-up oriented, but that has plenty of options for jumping, swinging, climbing and sliding.
In this garden in Greenwich the owners wanted a chic design to complement their high-end interiors, with outdoor kitchen and sofas for drinks with friends and family, outdoor dining, and also plenty of opportunities for their two daughters aged 4 and 14 to enjoy being outside.
Hidden trampoline
To avoid the slightly awkward phenomenon in modern garden design of having an outdoor dining table a couple of metres from your indoor dining table, a new pergola was designed at the end of the garden, with Ibiza-chic lighting, and plenty of scented evergreen climbing plants to ramble over the pergola structure. To add to the arbour effect, one section of the pergola has a tree growing up through it, which also functions to screen a new build which has sprung up on the plot behind. The pergola also has hanging points for swings and hammocks, utilising clip-on carabiners for a versatile set-up.
Outdoor kitchen
The raised terrace includes built-in sofas (with seats that lift up for storage) and a small L-shaped kitchen area with built-in barbeque and bar table, so that the chef can have company while cooking. Behind the seating area, sunk into the lawn is a trampoline, sited so that it remains hidden from inside the house, but parents can peer over the back of the seating to supervise the kids. Umbrella bamboo (a non-invasive type) is planted along the back of the terrace, so lush greenness will peek over as it grows.
The fences and pergola are painted in Farrow & Ball ‘Railings’ as a foil to the luxuriant green planting.
Pergola dining area
