Guest Blog - Moods Boards with Jarmanmurphy

The next stage of the Sitting Spiritually garden design is well under way with plants and trees having been ordered and work days booked in to layout and plant in newly prepared beds. Spring is on its way and we can’t wait.

Creating a new planting plan requires patience and research, excitement and vision and at jarmanmurphy this starts with creating mood boards to share with clients.

We start with our client brief and a feeling of what we want to create and we then begin to bring these ideas together, gathering illustrations, photos, words and descriptions to try and capture the emotion and mood of the garden.  It can be a feeling of movement or texture that leads the design or the need to include sculptural forms to create drama and repetition. It is also often a process of re-discovery as we trawl through our notes and thoughts, recalling inspiration and ideas.

The mood boards for the Sitting Spiritually garden bring together ideas to create three new planting schemes.  These areas will  have links to the rest of the garden with some repeated plants, but we also want to create new plant groupings  and journeys through the garden.  On this sloping site, the whole garden can be seen from the property and so we have developed a visual rhythm that spreads through the space, that is allowed to fluctuate and vary so that the planting design is both unified and dynamic.

A once precious pocket of lawn is being tranformed into a new planting area as Martin is happy to give up this awkward mowing spot! Our inspiration is drawn from grassy meadows and sculptural tall hedgerow forms. It is an opportunity to contiune some of the tall plantings from previous beds in the garden, but also act as a transition zone to the new large bed and pergola area.

Here we are introducing a repeated topiary column that will step and advance through the garden.  Knowing how much Martin loves topiary we were keen to develop this idea, but in an informal manner.  We gathered pictures of gardens that captured the feeling we are hoping to create.  These combined images give an impression, althought the scale and proportion of the topiary has to be balanced for the Sitting Spiritually garden, and the subsequent hunt for the perfect topiary plant has been key in this design.

On the boundary edges and at the lower levels of the garden we are creating new fern led areas that will blur with the surrounding landscape and shady lanes that are found in Dorset and Devon.  The mood board inspiration captures evergreen textures highlighted with delicate woodland flowers and layers such as Gillenia trifoliata and native Melica altissima alba. We want to enhance the area with the addition of some new tree ferns and further on  some multi-stem amelanchiers, to create two contrasting woodland groves.

The planting is now booked in for the beginning of March and so once everything is in the ground the true magic can begin as the growing season takes over and the daylight draws the plants skyward. 

Find out more about Jarmanmurphy  & meet them at our Open Weekends during the Summer