Private Residential Care Garden
Location: Dublin, Ireland.
Landscape Architect: Peter Donegan MSGD |
Peter Donegan Garden Design
Design Assistant: Elif Öztürk
Detail:
1) A period house in mind, our 4th in the last 18 months & the 3rd residential care home we have designed – minimum accessibility path dimensions 900mm; here we set the pathways to 1200 and 1600, allowing turning at any point.
2) Next self imposed brief to tie the house and garden in as one. In short, the garden should not compete with the house (as discussed recently on the @underground.pod ). Good landscape architecture knows when to keep it simple and dumb it down.
3) By no means least, the people who stay irrespective of how long never feel like watching the clock. I don’t think there’s anything worse than someone coming to visit and already wanting to go. And, without people, what matters any garden.
4) Garden design complete; Elif drew 4 sculptures. And like Aretha Franklin singing Preacher Man, 3 of them we knew just worked – the other more like a piece of art for a bank courtyard was quite simply soulless. Amazing how one simple stroke changes an entire feel.
5) ref point 2) above. Front of house became just that.
One simple single standard yet eloquent light. Taxus baccata hedge just inside, (griselina, prunus, ligustrum weren’t a fad then) and secure engineering to basement visible, but not a focal point. There’s a lot more to it than that I can promise you, but for all of the right reasons, you shouldn’t notice them.
6) the final image pairing the overall together I think shows it off best and you can see how (rear) the new materials to the new extension, meets old building, meets modern paving materials and laying, meets old walls and surrounds. And joins in with the front.
