A country garden in London

The garden of this old family home had been neglected during a long house refurbishment. We saved most of the characterful old fruit trees and created a lawn for table tennis. Deep flowerbeds surround the lawn and created a secret wildflower area at the end of the garden.

The old apple and pear trees were never in question — their gnarled, leaning trunks and decades of character were exactly the kind of thing no amount of new planting can replicate, so the design worked around them rather than through them, letting the lawn curve gently past where a straight edge would have meant losing one. Deep borders of penstemons, verbena, agapanthus and ornamental grasses were planted right up against the old brick walls, giving the garden layers of colour and texture from spring blossom through to the seed heads and grasses of autumn.

At the far end, screened from the rest of the garden by trees and tall planting, wild carrot, verbena and grasses were left to grow long and loose, creating a wildflower area that feels genuinely secret rather than simply unmown. A tree seat wraps around one of the old trunks here, giving the family somewhere to sit within the meadow itself rather than just looking at it from a distance. Table tennis on the lawn, blossom in spring, and a wild corner to disappear into — the garden now works as hard for everyday family life as the house above it once needed the same kind of care.