Last year, we designed and constructed a garden in Over Norton, Oxfordshire.

 

On our first visit, the client showed us an oddly shaped space in a new-build development. Apart from the lawn seeded by the developers, nothing was there, and the ground levels were remarkably uneven. The client’s brief was simple: zone the space into usable areas with lots of colour, big trees, a reduced lawn, and an orchard, and let our creativity and knowledge of gardens drive the project. We wanted our concept to be forward-thinking, low-maintenance, and drought-tolerant to minimise the input needed to keep the plants happy.

 

The site is on top of a hill, south-facing, on extremely free-draining Cotswold brash, with very little topsoil. It is also exposed to occasionally very strong winds. So our design needed to be tough, resilient, and clever in its use of materials.The final proposal zones the space into two gravel garden areas and a lower lawn/orchard. The story is that the gravel gardens point to a new, increasingly evidence-based future for English gardens: hot and dry. In these spaces, the planting consists of a matrix of drought-tolerant grass (Sesleria autumnalis), a diverse mix of bulletproof perennials such as Echinacea, Salvia and Pervoskia, and multi-stem Eleagnus multiflora trees, which look a bit like olives. The lower lawn and orchard nod to a more traditional English garden, creating a clear juxtaposition and a talking point about climate change and its effects on our gardens.

 

The gravel garden has been a huge success and, apart from the mature trees, hasn't been watered once since it was planted last year! This seems like a miracle during this ongoing heatwave, especially as many gardens are suffering. The gravel acts as a mulch and traps moisture in the soil below. It's a welcome side effect that this deep layer of inorganic substrate is effectively sterile, so weeds struggle or can’t self-seed. The client claims to have pulled only five weeds since November 2025!