This garden has created a delightful oasis for a retired couple to enjoy all year round.

My brief here was to create a colourful back garden for my clients, a retired couple who enjoy gardening but do not wish to be a slave to their garden. So a garden that is easy to look after as and when they feel like it, with colour all year round, the emphasis being on flowers and fragrance. My clients liked their existing box hedging which we were to reuse or replicate if possible.

I was also to include my client's summer house, gazebo and arches, and create privacy from the neighbour next door.

A green oak pergola clothed in climbers created a private seating space right outside the back door. Using the existing paving, I designed a garden with curved lawn, wrapped around with borders planted with shrubs, roses, perennials, grasses and planted thousands of bulbs for instant colour in the first season.

From June onwards the clematis and roses start to flower and perennials take over for a long season of colour.

The back boundary facing North has deciduous azaleas and colourful cornus for winter, hydrangeas for late summer with the existing specimen trees underplanted with hellebores, primulas, ferns, astilbes, campanulas and other shade lovers.

My clients chose astro turf for easy management.

It is a garden for all seasons, bright and colourful, inviting and interesting from all angles, with specimen rhododendrons planted in containers on the patio.

A small water feature close to the house brings life and movement into the garden.