City Garden
We offer a full range of services encompassing all approaches to designing and creating City Gardens, both locally in Norfolk as well as Cambridge, Peterborough and London
Our client's garden is situated in the glorious city of Cambridge, and is a classic city garden in that it is long and thin, at 30 meters by 5 meters. The garden sits on heavy clay and when they first moved in they managed to wrangle it into shape, but since having a young family, it slowly got on top of them and they felt a full overhaul was needed. The main idea was to create three distinct spaces that would be functional, and easy to maintain, whilst giving the garden a bit of a journey as the client had built a beautiful studio office at the bottom of the garden. So we started from scratch.
Ditton Walk, Cambridge | Case Study ~ City Garden Spring 2025
The first thing was to clear the site, so out came the diseased cherry and the overgrown Ceonothus that was now heavily leaning into the centre of the garden. Using the micro digger we dug out the roots, and then brought in the rotovater to turnover the site and begin to get things levelled out. Using the dozer blade on the digger and plenty of raking we finally had the site cleared and level.
Section one, closest to the house, was to be put to lawn with a raised border along the wall, incorporating a set and storage area. We brought in 1.5 tons of topsoil with which to enrich the lawns foundation and give us a perfect bed to lay on. The lawn took in a matter of days due to a very warm few days in March.
The second section was to be the main growing area which was framed in gravel and created with three large raised beds built out of sleepers with dimensions of 240cm x 120cm x 60cm. We dug out foundations for the sleepers and back filled with type 1 so that the wood didn't sit in the damp soil, and then backfilled with 3 tons of compost. We then stabilised the area around the beds using a mixture of type one and gravel, before laying a weed control fabric, and then finally 50mm of pea shingle.
The final section, closest to the studio office encompassed a lovely old Hawthorn which had been cut back the previous winter, this still created a bit of shade along with the large boundary wall. For this section we used a stunning light woodchip, and a single sleeper raised border which was to be planted with ferns. Alongside this we built a simple base for a shed which was to be painted with a matching colour scheme to the studio office.
Overall the garden took 4 weeks to transform and the clients decided on their planting scheme. Not only did it make their lives easier, but they refound the love of gardening, and had a stunning space for the children to play and entertain on summer evenings.
