Child-friendly garden, Golders Green

The brief for this garden was to create a child-friendly space with a lawn as large as possible. Fulfilling the brief involved restraining the borders to 80cm deep in order to maximize the lawn size and rationalizing the existing steps, which were all of different heights.

I was therefore left with the challenge of creating year-round interest within unusually narrow borders. A space-saving scheme of clipped buxus balls and tallish perennials provided the perfect solution.

The existing hugely-overgrown planting was replaced with child-friendly plants combining non-spiky, scented and wild-life friendly species. Two olive trees, a trachelospernum jasminnoides and six clipped buxus balls provide the garden with a stong winter backbone, while the white-blossom perennials bring height and seasonal interest to the scheme.