Grandmas Garden Transformation

During weekends and evenings my family and I took part in a transformation of my Grandmas Garden. The brief was to create a low maintenance garden and create a new path down to the shed. The project took us just over 6 weeks to complete.

At the start of the project, I sat with my Grandma and discussed what she wanted for her garden.  We talked about the size of the path, the types of plants and how the garden could be designed for easy maintenance.  I designed some quick visualisations and she decided which design she liked best.

When undertaking the work, it was decided to incorporate some sleepers to the left hand side of the garden to address a difference in level between my Grandma’s garden and the level of the barge board to her neighbours fence.  Other than this alteration the work was carried out in accordance with the designs I drew.

The result has been a great success finished off by planting some winter bedding plants and planting some bulbs for the spring.  Overall, I am incredibly pleased with the result and so is my Grandma.  She is looking forward to enjoying her garden next summer.

Various design options for the garden

Easter Lino Print Cards

As we all couldn’t be together this year due to the current pandemic I decided to send my family members Easter cards.

I intended that the card could be displayed after Easter and sketched various options as well as looking for online inspiration, and decided on a rabbit design. In similar style to my Christmas lino cards I used black and white to create a more simple and contrasting design. I began the design process by drawing the rabbit design onto tracing paper. Once drawn it was turned over as if it was backwards, allowing the printed design to come out in the correct orientation. The image was then traced onto the piece of lino. The lino is then ready to be cut. During this process I used various sizes of cutting tools to create different patterns and detailing.

Once the plate was cut I then began producing the cards. Having chosen thick printmaking paper to create the card, I used paper-folding tools to make a crease down the center of the paper to ensure a neat fold.

Once the cards were made the inking process began, using only black ink to create a contrast allowing the design to fit into everyone’s home décor.

These cards have gone down very well with my family this Easter especially as we are not altogether.
Happy Easter!

Items Used:

• A3 Cutting Mat

• Pentel Mechanical Pencil with HB Leads

• Tracing Paper

• Thick paper preferably a minimum of 150gsm

• Paper folding tools

• A6 piece of lino

• Black block printing ink

• Fine Line Pens/ Brio for writing inside

RHS Hampton Court Flower Show - Featuring the Duchess of Cambridge's Back to Nature Garden

During my summer break I was able to revisit the RHS Hampton Court Flower Show.  This year it included the Duchess of Cambridge’s Back to Nature Garden. This was very interesting as the garden was inspired by encouraging children to explore the outdoors and play within the natural landscape. This is a very fitting topic for our current environment where more housing is being built with less access to natural outdoor spaces.  This garden reminded me of my concept for my second year secondary school where I too encouraged children to explore the outdoors. The Duchess had placed secrete areas only for children, as well as campfires and a working river where children were encouraged to play in. Parts of this garden can now be found at RHS Wisley Gardens. 

These gardens once again where inspiring and helped me to explore even more about landscape design and how architecture can be influenced by it. 

There was a number of sensory exhibits which I found very interesting.   Encouraging the use of multiple senses in the garden ,was popular amongst many designers, and very inspiring.

RHS Hampton Court Flower Show

During the summer of 2017 I was luck enough to attend the RHS Hampton Court Flower Show, this was a particularly interesting as it was focusing on mental and physical health and how garden can inform these emotions. Above are some images taken by myself whilst visiting, with particular interest how gardens and plants can become spaces and inform an area.

Another aspect that was interesting was the use of bright colours to help inform a space, I also found that particularly smells help to enhance mental health within a outside space as well as adding bright contracts to the landscape architecture.