This new country house was surrounded with generous deep planted borders, completely in proportion with the house. However, they were planted with a range of evergreen shrubs. The shrubs had become large and overbearing. They also gave no bursts of colour, scent or sense of the changing seasons.

The planting design created evergreen structure with Yew cubes, some interplanted with multi stemmed crab apples, for their Spring blossom and jewel red apples in Autumn. Then, from amongst the formality, a froth of planting in blue, purple and white with highlights of acid green and pink make for an ebullient show all summer.

The plants are chosen to work hard throughout the season, without the need for staking, daily deadheading and cutting back. Much of the planting flowers continuously or repeat flowers, giving good value for relatively little intervention.