The Entertaining Retreat

(Harrow on the Hill)

Harrow on the Hill Garden Design,

North London

A private retreat from a high pressure professional life. A client who knows how to live. A process that values sustainability and a mature hand to bring it all together.

In the Harrow garden, a light gravel pathway guides visitors through a lush, winding landscape through seating areas to a bespoke garden room and bar clad in sustainable reclaimed timber.

The client now enjoys the WWOO kitchen with Big Green Egg barbecue and Vlaze bar.

When you leave the bespoke kitchen, the foliage-covered pergola is the first spot to welcome you on your journey down the garden.

The path culminates in a luxury garden room offering a flexible space that can function as a private office overlooking the garden's tranquility, or an all-weather entertaining hub. There’s a gorgeous custom copper bar inside.

Throughout the garden, water features provide serene ambiance. Careful plant selection adds an aura of peace in tune with nature.

What problems did we solve? The client had a spacious garden but it lacked purpose beyond being laid to basic lawn.

With two narrow beds offering little interest or privacy, it was uninteresting and no longer served their busy lifestyle.

As a successful professional, they needed a true retreat for rejuvenation, entertaining friends and relaxing with family.

I transformed the yard into a contemporary garden oasis perfect for their needs.

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Testimonial

“I came across Melanie's website while researching ideas for a revamp of my Victorian garden. I was initially skeptical whether I needed someone to design for me, after the first discovery call, I quickly realised that I did. Melanie quickly understood our aims, goals and lifestyle and came up with a plan that matched them perfectly. Melanie has an eye for detail, recommending innovative and stylish plants and landscaping. She changed the design as needed, taking into account function and form, recommended great trades so that the whole project went seamlessly from end to end. We now have a growing garden that will be an addition to the house and somewhere we will be able to spend some quality time in. I am looking forward to the spring now, as I know we will have more planting to do, more hardware to source and that Melanie will be guiding us through our new investment.”

The 10 guiding MHGD project principles

Each Melanie Hick Garden Design garden works to as many of our ten principles as possible. This project incorporated these garden design principles:

Belonging, sense of place, stewardship - a sense of enclosure and escape respecting Harrow’s high water table on the hillside
Climate resilience for a robust future - permeable paving through the garden
Accessible ways in to the garden - increased side access for wheelchairs, curved design to introduce visitors to plants
Discovery and play to connect with nature and each other - three dedicated seating and entertaining areas
Emotional wellness for rest, grounding and resonance - fragrance, water, rest built in
Spatial organisation - the pleasing outcome of good design - generous winding paths and broad seating areas resolving in a garden room that sits just away from the boundary
Cultural meaning with art, storytelling and artefacts - Less important for this client that generous entertaining
Species-specific habitat to measure our effectiveness - Planting the provides for local wildlife
Reclaimed and low carbon materials - Reclaimed timber and copper for the garden room.
Retain high value existing trees and links to history - Kept ancient central tree and some boundary shrubs for privacy.