Greenes of Sussex Garden Design Ideas

How Did They Do That? - Surfaces

How many times, as designers, have you gone to shows, or looked through magazines and seen something you would like to put in one of your designs, but not had the foggiest idea how you would specify something similar to a contractor? This first in a series of three articles looks at the variety of Surfaces which made an appearance at Chelsea and how they were achieved.

The beautiful Travatine pillars in the Laurent Perrier garden look convincingly solid, so how are they made to ‘float’ above the square of water beneath? The pillar is made by cladding a metal frame with ply and sticking facing panels of Travatine to it. The feet of the metal frame are well-recessed, so when the stone panels are fitted to finish just above the ground, an uninterrupted strip of shadow appears, and the illusion complete.

Next door, at the Cancer Research garden, I was impressed with the long, sinuous retaining walls seemingly made of stone is in fact made of 5m sections of polystyrene built off-site, joined and rendered on-site with Armacoat. This render gives the wall a stoney, textured finish, almost on a par with Travatine. The circular patterning in the boundary wall is cut out with a laser using instructions specified by AutoCAD. It is colour-rendered with Sto, a clever water repellent, self-cleaning exterior finish. Its surface is textured in such a way that there is very little contact area for dirt and water.

The glossy surface of the giant pebble seats in this garden, is created using a gel coat for that shiny, sea-washed finish, which also includes a marble and bathstone composite to colour. They work as functional seats made from a light fibreglass resin and are actually hollow, but tough enough to sit on. And typically of Ben Barrell, they also work as beautiful sculptures, lifting the circular motif out of the ground.

Living walls and green roofs are at last making an impact. The living wall in Kate Gould’s Eco Chic garden was built by Aldingbourne Nurseries using the ANS system. I particularly liked the fact that it broke free of the trend to use neat plants which maintain a flat surface. This wall positively flourishes.

In the Children’s Society garden a concrete wall is enlivened with wide, vertical strips of Pratia pedunculata, a small evergreen which flowers tiny white all summer. These strips are created using the Biotecture living wall system and contrast brilliantly with the plain wall panels

Whichever system you use, the best advice is to contact the manufacturer as early in the planning stage as possible. Many such projects require bespoke solutions which may be cheaper to negotiate while builds are still fluid.

In James Wong’s Canary Island garden, I liked the varying textures on the same wall. One section was constructed with lacquered wooden slats which had been treated in the same way as the posts in the bathing pavilion. An interesting process, the lacquer is applied in a sealed box and sprayed on rather like instant tan. It isn’t particularly cheap, but results in a completely maintenance free product which is heat-proof, humidity proof, water proof and UV proof making it totally fade resistant. The plus side is, because you can lacquer softwood, you save money as well as our hardwood resources. On another section, they tried to imitate the look of lava rock by torching the smooth black basalt surface which was already covered with a deliberately uneven coating of oil and water.

In Nature Ascending, the concrete walls are lifted by the beautiful detail of tiny bee and sparrow holes set into them using varying apertures of bamboo. They must be set at least 15cm deep for bees and at least 2.5m high for sparrows. Angus Thompson had them protruding slightly from the wall surface, which produced diagonal shadows slanting across the wall. The smart contemporary detailing continues with half recessed wire and wood bird feeders, bulging out of the wall like giant insect eyes reminiscent of a Luis Barragan wall sculpture.

The small strips of stone on this planter caught my eye and just broke up enough of the plain surfacing to make it interesting. I really liked the way they jutted out at odd angles to each other. Tomoko Onsonoe has cleverly re-cut and re-ordered those mats of rock strips often used for internal feature walls, and then glued them to her planters with a proprietary glue such as No Nails.

In the next article, Everyday Materials with a Twist, shows how our Chelsea designers surprised us.

Photographer: Donna Taplin