04/09/2026
💚🌼🌿 Project Commencement Day 🌿🌼💚
Creating a Luxuriously Planted Oasis of Colour
This project is about transforming an under-established garden into a rich, immersive and beautifully layered planting scheme, while retaining the character and functionality of the existing garden.
Working from the landscape design and planting visualisations provided by the award winning www.landcraft.co.uk - our team here at Settle Petal - Exterior Floristry alongside our parent company Oakfield Landscaping London will create a garden that feels natural and abundant, with sweeping planting borders flowing around a generous central lawn. The intention is to move away from a predominantly open lawn and introduce a much stronger sense of colour, texture, seasonal interest and biodiversity.
The Starting Point
The existing garden already provides an excellent framework, with mature trees, established boundary walls and a substantial lawn area. Rather than completely redesigning the space, the approach is to work with these existing features and carefully introduce new elements around them.
The existing trees will be retained as important structural features, providing height, maturity and shade. The central lawn will also remain, giving the garden an open green heart and allowing the planting to be viewed from different perspectives.
The transformation will come through the creation of large, organically shaped planting borders on either side of the lawn.
Creating the New Planting Borders
The existing lawn edges will be carefully redefined to create sweeping, naturalistic curves. These borders will deliberately avoid rigid geometric lines, allowing the planting to appear as though it has naturally evolved through the garden.
Soil will be redistributed and prepared to create the required levels and subtle contours, particularly where the design calls for the borders to gently rise towards the boundaries.
The planting beds will then be carefully prepared with suitable soil and organic matter, creating the foundations for a healthy and long-lasting planting scheme.
A Palette Designed for Colour
The real character of the finished garden will come from its planting.
The scheme combines perennials, ornamental grasses, shrubs, climbers and structural plants, creating several layers of planting rather than relying on one dominant species.
Colour will move through the garden in waves, with combinations of whites, soft pinks, purples, blues, oranges and fresh greens.
Plants featured within the design include:
- Echinacea purpurea 'Doppelgänger'
- Salvia 'May Night'
- Agastache foeniculum
- Campanula carpatica 'Deep Blue Clips'
- Geranium sanguineum
- Hemerocallis fulva
- Liatris spicata 'Kobold'
- Sedum spectabile
- Alchemilla mollis
- Veronica gentianoides 'Pallida'
- Miscanthus sinensis 'Morning Light'
- Miscanthus purpurascens
- Hydrangea arborescens
- Myrtus communis
- Pittosporum tenuifolium
- Viburnum trilobum 'Hahs'
- Nerine bowdenii
- Taxus baccata
- Trachelospermum jasminoides
This combination gives the garden a deliberately luxurious feel, while maintaining a relaxed and natural planting style.
Structure Behind the Colour
A successful planting scheme needs more than flowers. The design therefore incorporates evergreen and structural plants to provide interest throughout the year.
Existing mature trees will form the upper canopy, while shrubs such as Myrtus, Pittosporum, Viburnum and Hydrangea will create the middle layer.
Ornamental grasses including Miscanthus will introduce movement, particularly when catching the breeze, while lower-growing perennials will soften the edges and provide continuous seasonal colour.
This layered approach means that even when individual plants are out of flower, the garden will retain structure, texture and visual interest.
Working Around the Existing Trees
The established trees are an important part of the garden's identity and will be carefully incorporated into the new scheme.
Where required, trees will be pruned to improve access, light levels and visibility. The planting beneath them may be adjusted according to the conditions found on site, ensuring that the final planting is appropriate for the available light and root environment.
The objective is not simply to plant around the trees, but to make them feel like an intentional part of the overall composition.
Hard Landscaping & Garden Access
The existing Dutch clay paving will provide a contrasting hard-landscaped element against the softer planting and lawn.
The relationship between the paving, lawn and borders will be carefully considered so that the transition feels seamless.
Existing brick boundary walls will remain a strong architectural feature, with planting used to soften and complement the masonry. Climbers and taller planting will help integrate the boundaries into the garden rather than allowing them to dominate the space.
A Garden Designed to Feel Larger
One of the key principles of the design is the way the planting borders guide the eye through the garden.
Rather than creating straight borders along both sides, the sweeping curves encourage the eye to travel deeper into the space. The lawn becomes a natural pathway through the planting, creating changing views as you move through the garden.
This gives the garden a greater sense of depth and discovery.
From the house, the view will be framed by layers of planting. Further into the garden, new planting combinations and structural trees will gradually reveal themselves, creating a much more immersive experience.
The Final Result
The completed garden will be transformed from a predominantly lawn-led space into a luxuriously planted outdoor sanctuary.
The vision is for a garden that changes throughout the seasons — fresh and vibrant in spring, overflowing with colour through summer, rich and textural into autumn, and retaining strong evergreen structure throughout winter.
The result will be a garden that feels abundant without becoming chaotic, colourful without becoming overpowering, and luxurious while retaining a natural English garden character.
For Oakfield Landscaping London, the project is about more than simply installing plants. It is about carefully preparing the landscape, respecting the existing mature features and bringing the designer's planting vision to life with precision and craftsmanship.
The finished garden will become a living tapestry of colour, texture, movement and seasonal interest — a true planted oasis... 🌿💚🌼🌸🏵️
