School ‘themed’ garden

One of my favorite projects is a themed garden for a Primary School in

South London.

The idea was to create a ‘dry’ replica of a Kentish Riverside,

on what was a tarmac car park.

We achieved this by starting with a ‘dry’ riverbed of kidney stones

laid in a flowing pattern, with ceramic fish set into them.

Next we designed and built a miniature Oast house, and
a Kentish Barn.

To comply with disability access requirements we added a

jetty to the dock.
Then constructed three mock sailing boats using trees as masts

( to facilitate shade in the Summer months).

We also added a typical stone bridge, a gravel path around the

garden area, and a fallen tree ( depicting the great storm of 1987).

Here you can see the ceramic fish set into the dry stone riverbed.

Here you can just make out the natural stone bridge.

The idea was to use all local materials so that whilst the ‘garden’

was created to be a quiet rest area during breaks it also had

some educational historical significance.

We took a little ‘licence’ with the barn, but kept the materials authentic.
When it came to planting, we arranged for each child to plant at least one plant,
some plants ended up being planted more than once.

The end result won a number of awards, and was remarkably free from any vandalism.