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New design and build process
21st Feb:
We have continued over the last few months to improve and fine tune our design and build service. We are really seeing the benefits that a thorough design process brings, both in terms of planning from our end and with regard to managing our client’s expectations. Experience is a wonderful thing and over the years we have learnt what information and questions are key in order for us to create the right design for each client. The clearer and more detailed the information at the beginning the more exceptional the garden will be at the end.
We can now provide a range of drawings from simple line drawings to 3 dimensional drawings which go a long way to helping our clients visualise the proposed garden and to see where their money is being spent. This visual aid is very useful in ironing out any issues prior to the build starting; one person’s mind’s eye picture can be very different from the next.
As a design AND build landscaping company we can overcome various issues that some garden designers and their separate contractors encounter. We are there at the inception of your dream garden so therefore understand the journey that had been taken and what your likes and dislikes are which means its quick and easy to deal with any issues.
With 50% of our design fee being waived if we build our designs too, we try to ensure the whole process from initial enquiry, through the design, planning and building stages, is as straight forward and pain free as possible. (And of course don’t forget our maintenance service too!).
Garden furniture – massive furniture sale
1st Feb:
If you have always wanted stylish Rattan garden furniture for your garden but never got round to buying it, now is definitely the time to think again. We are currently offering amazing prices on the ex display garden furniture we have in the show room at the moment. We need to clear this stock to make room for the arrival of new furniture this month, all furniture must go.
• Black Rattan Sofa set – 2 seater sofa with an arm chair and 2 foot stool/coffee table – from £500
• Rattan Coffee table with 2 chairs and 2 footstools (to create a mini lounger) – from £300
• Dinning Table and 8 chairs – from £800
• Sun lounger – from £250.00
• Cushion Box – from £250
Please call us or come in and see us if you are interested.
Conkers
1st Nov:
You don’t have to be a tree hugger to care and we have all enjoyed a game of conkers at some stage in our lives.
The horse chestnut tree has been hit by two diseases. The first hit is a bacteria, bleeding canker, which infects the bark and cuts the water supply to the crown off. The second hit is an ‘alien’ leaf-mining moth which is relatively new in the UK and comes from the Balkans. Its indiscriminate, attacking workaday horse chestnuts and grander trees alike, weakening them which results in smaller conkers.
You may have noticed the leaves turning a deep shade of brown and thinking this was just autumn protocol but up close the leaves are marked with the infestation of the leaf miner, if you look close enough you can see the caterpillars embedded in the leaf. The tree hit by this infestation will not die immediately but it does have long term implications. A big tree can contain up to 2 million moths with the caterpillars eating through the leaves turning them brown earlier than they would naturally therefore reducing its ability to photosynthesis meaning the tree has less energy stored for the winter months. This makes the tree severely weak and if on top of the moths the tree is hit by bleeding canker it could easily die.
There are a few ways to stop the leaf miner. Some tree have been sprayed, it is also important to clear leaf litter from underneath the tree, this removes the moths habitat therefore reducing its numbers. There have also been some experiments with small wasps that feed on the moths.
If you would like to take a more active approach to finding a way of saving the conker tree you can join the likes of Steven Fry and download the free app from www.conkertreescience.org.uk. You can upload your findings of trees in your area straight on to the website therefore enabling the ecologists to plot how far the leaf miner has travelled, how many trees are being effected and hopefully a way to protect the tree for generations of conker players to come.
Something to do this weekend – Serpentine Gallery Pavillion
6th Oct:
You have until the 18th October to visit this year’s Serpentine Gallery Pavilion. Step away from the hustle and bustle of London, a garden within a garden.
“The concept for this year’s Pavilion is the hortus conclusus, a contemplative room, a garden within a garden. One enters the building from the lawn and begins the transition into the central garden, a place abstracted from the world of noise and traffic and the smells of London – an interior space within which to sit, to walk, to observe the flowers.”
http://www.serpentinegallery.org/2011/04/serpentine_gallery_pavillion_2011_zumthor.html
A Working-day in the Life of an HP Landscaper.
4th Aug:
Summer time sees our landscaping teams working to capacity across gardens in our area of London. The last couple of days have been typical of this time of year, seeing the appearance of both the Factor 20 and the company issue water-proofs. Our Great British Summer. The job ahead in this particular two days is to be mainly heavy ground working with a little skilled and precise installation work. A prior ground or soil survey has revealed the presence of clay. A lot of clay.
As part of a five-strong team I arrive on site before 8 am where the client offers us the great British motivator, a round of teas, relieved to find out they are all white-with-ones.
We glove up and set out the days tools, dust sheets, barrows and boards. Already hot, sleeves are rolled up, sun cream slapped on faces and deep breaths taken as today’s task is the excavation of a metre deep hole and the erection of 12 posts within to install a fabulous trampoline as part of a children’s play area. Did I mention that the hole is to be made through clay? Luckily we are able to call on two extra members of our team to come and do some leg work lugging hundreds of bags of clay and rubble out the front to the skip, returning to the garden with over 300 20kg bags of sand from the five ton drop made that morning. That’s when the teas really come into their own. Some of the boys progress to white-with-twos.
10 am arrives fast, and the 15 minute break results in a rapid stiffening of muscles so it’s back to the digging and the carrying. This makes room for the first of the 12 posts on which the trampoline will be set. It feels good to see the idea coming to life, for both us and the client whose delightful children are taking full advantage of the weather and the holiday to splash about excitedly in the paddling pool and offer us bites of their half eaten dripping lollies, one dressed as a mermaid and the other as a cowboy.
By the end of the day, the sand is shifted and levelled in the play area, the hole is completed and eight posts are erected.
The next day arrives and the British summer gifts us another warm day; with a side of heavy and constant rain. You’ll see from the pictures that the hole is doing it’s job of draining away rainwater – just wish the raincoats were doing as good a job – and the lads remain committed to meeting the deadline.
As soon as the shed is erected we have somewhere to huddle together and eat our soggie sarnies, sup our restorative brews and discuss the best way to lay the artificial turf on a bed of layered safety-foam which we are using to cover the entire children’s play area. I’ve never seen a shed go up in such record time! It turns out that the conditions do not lend themselves to laying the grass and foam as it doesn’t give the product (nomow artificial turf) the best chance of a long and maintenance free life.
That being said, I’d have loved to show you pictures of the completed job, but this being Our Great British Summer, sometimes we just have to do the very best that mother nature allows us to.
Feature in SW Magazine
21st Jun:
This month we have an article in Londons SW Magazine talking about top tips for your garden in July, looking at seating, planting, material choice, lighting and garden features. To see this article on line or receive a hard copy of the magazine go to www. http://sw.greatbritishlife.co.uk/
Chelsea Flower Show
31st May:
Press Day tickets at Chelsea Flower.
What a luxury. No heaving queues, no standing on tip-toes to see over a mass of purple rinses and camera phones, no jostling for position to get a view of the show gardens. Simply a relaxing walk around (and through) all the gardens, stands and stalls of Chelsea Flower Show 2011.
At first glance the show seemed much the same as year’s gone before; the same suppliers, the same contractors, the same designers (they really are forming quite a clique……..one day!!) consistently impressive bulging, billowing planting schemes, and mind boggling feats of installation. However….to summarise this year’s show as “the same as last year” would not only show me up as someone who didn’t have much insight into our profession, it would also do a disservice to the amazing amount of hardwork and talent that is required to create these one off masterpieces.
The ability of all involved to create in a matter of days (not withstanding all the work off site and months of prep. however) what we at Harrington Porter attempt to construct over several weeks, is what continues to impress me each year. Planting that looks as if it’s been there for years, huge trees up to 6 or 7 metres carted in for dramatic effect, water-wheels, tree stumps, horrendously expensive hand cut stone, swimming pools, and other installations that for one week look, in their own orchestrated environment, that they have been there for years.
So what of this year’s flower show in particular? Our signature style at Harrington Porter is that of the contemporary urban garden. And evidence of this, blinkered or not, is what I look for each year and what impresses me most. And for this reason my choice for best in show was Trailfinders Australian Garden presented by Fleming’s Nurseries designed by Ian Barker. Read more about the Australian Garden here. I loved the futuristic feature seating, the combination of stone and paving, and the stunning white/silver/evergreen planting scheme. The huge water feature pond isn’t really conducive to your typical London garden, but everything else really worked for me. The balance of entertaining space vs planting vs features made it a garden that could genuinely be used – a garden that could realistically be built for someone.
That leads me on to my choice for worst in show. Dirmaund Gavin’s sky garden. Totally indulgent, totally unrealistic, and distinctly average unless you were allowed to go up in the floating garden. Which I wasn’t. I’d guess this creation cost twice as much as most other show gardens, it was certainly twice the size, and whilst it highlighted everything flamboyant and extravagant about Chelsea, personally I thought it was a bit of a dud.
The other garden that really stood out for me was Luciano Giubbilei’s Laurent Perrier garden. This is a designer who’s style I love, and copy! and it was the garden that I had done some background research in to. His style is one of symmetry, clean lines and order, off-set with beautiful features, block planting, and sculpture. And this year’s garden for which he won another gold medal was stunning. I think I’d expected something more formal and architectural with regards to the planting, but he did this with the hard landscaping and softened things with the most beautiful flowing low lying planting. Classic signature features were on show – under-cut feature shrubs, in this case Parrotia persica, beech hedging, and linear Cedec pathway revealing his typically Italianate style. See more of Luciano’s designs here.
Trends that our keen eyes at Harrington Porter noticed this year were:
Green / Living Walls
Water – all manner of shapes, sizes and features
Curves with planting and hard landscaping
Cornus kousa
Vegetable and herb gardening
Green roofs
Blue and yellow planting
Garden design and build at Harrington porter
20th Jan:
It has been another long but enjoyable year for the Harrington Porter landscaping team. We have built several really exciting garden projects and in advance of an update of our portfolio, please see a selection of photos below. We have built a number of stylish, contemporary outdoor “rooms” with a common trend of artificial lawns, floating benches, uplighting, low maintenance planting and rendered planters. The design of these spaces has been considered with the increasingly popular concept of all year round outdoor entertaining in mind, with outdoor heaters, firepits, and lighting, meaning that it doesn’t have to be mid-summer to use your garden anymore.
LANDSCAPING TEAM NEWS
7th Dec:
The Christmas break is nearly upon us and we have 3 remaining weeks to finish up all our jobs before the Harrington Porter landscaping team goes on its much deserved Winter break.
We are currently working on 3 projects and despite the weather we are on target to finish them all on time. A large family garden in Tooting has only a treehouse (a Xmas present for the clients’ 3 excited boys) to finish, together with some final planting. An outdoor room in Wandsworth has only the lighting to be installed and a few final snags to finish, and a decking job in Fulham is halfway through and on course to be finished too.
