Putting things on skew adds drama to a garden design!

I am lucky enough to be a London and Essex garden designer and I often get told that my designing is kooky. Sometimes I think it does it good to shake things up a little and step, ever so slightly, outside of the norm. Positioning things within the garden that are ever so slightly not quite right sometimes upsets what someone’s understanding of what we think a garden should be like.

I once saw a programme about the genius that is Vivian Westwood. She had found a 17th Century pattern for shirt. It was a very simple design and all she had done is taken the neck hole and shifted it, just a little, to the left. In doing so it had completely altered the look of the shirt, genius!

If you can take an idea, a certain skew to the design can really add drama. Inject energy into the garden and shift our expectations of what we think a garden should look like and feel like. In this design we simply made the archway slightly on the skew adding interest and edge of playful child like excitement. This Alice in Wonderland style approach can work across many different platforms in the garden. Playing with scale and proportion is another way to add drama and challenge the expected in the garden. Oversize trees, giant planters, vertical planting, anything that slightly steps outside the norm. Adding things to the space that you do not normally see outside also helps with giving a garden an edge. Try it, you might surprise yourself.