Coastal Garden Design Heaven
Isn’t Instagram a wonderful place sometimes…?
A few months ago, quietly going about my business of this business – I stumbled across a post that really captured my headspace.
Bonnie & I have been slowly developing our lovely home we purchased via Savills two years ago – interior improvements & building a large oak framed cart lodge initially, obtaining planning permission for an extension to that & the addition of a wellness suite/sauna.
And more recently, we have turned our attention to our garden, having lived with it for two years to see what works & what doesn’t.
It’s a wilderness, which we like. And it’s a definite coastal climate landscape garden space, that’s lucky enough to be flanked by a river & is blessed with some wonderful mature trees, giving it shape, form & a natural flow, full of amazing bird & wildlife.
But it’s a mess. And, as good at we are at finding great homes & doing them up & we know a good garden when we see one, gardening is not our forte.
Luckily, we found a person whose forte is gardening – enter Chloe from Studio Marina.
We exchanged a few DMs & it became clear her vision was our vision, her vibe was our vibe.
The process ran in a very similar vein to our own Flint Homes process – we came to her needing expertise, knowledge & to find someone who understood us & our vision & run with it in a turbocharged, professional & expert manner.
And, crucially with a genuine passion & a pleasant demeanour in the process. Not all about the dollar signs…
The lovely, softly spoken Chloe was just that person – immediately beguiling us with her Belfast dialect, incredible knowledge of plants, love of trees, affinity with nature & absorption of gardens. Not to mention her obvious talents & vision – & love of our garden space.
She is based in Singapore & North Norfolk (which sounds even more glamorous than you can imagine telling your friends about at parties!) & when she was next over here earlier this year, she paid us a visit, listened, meandered through the garden, took lots of photos, made even more notes & soaked up our energy & the flow & feel of the garden, deeply expertly.
A short while later, we had the most amazing 18-page document – showing us the site, its historical context, an amazing design with our proposed look & feel, suggested plant types, stunning images of gardens to die for & a step by step plan of what our new garden design could look like (with a lot of hard work & a small fortune on plants!). The plan included nodes, edging, fencing, paths, meadows, palates, plants & so, so much passion.
It blew our socks off & we love it!
Just one page of the 18-page design.
Bonnie took the project over & fine tuned some of the detail – which Chloe was superb with, making small tweaks to get it just how we wanted & way better than anything we could have ever come up with ourselves.
The process has been enjoyable, rewarding, educational & calm.
Chloe is an absolute delight to have about the place & communicate with & her designs are utterly amazing.
Now all we need to do is bring the design to life – no pressure!
We will be doing the work with the groundworks support of our good pals (& extension builders) Avocet Homes & with landscaping expertise, decades of knowledge & plant provision from nobody else but utterly amazing The Romantic Garden Nursery.
Please do contact Chloe for outstanding garden design at Studio Marina.
And do check out her incredible ‘Swim Between The Flags’ garden for RNLI at Sandringham Flower Show – where she met his Royal Highness, King Charles! It’s such an amazing garden design & so, so much fun. And if she’s good enough for one Royal…
Stay tuned for more garden updates…
