The building and the terrace are Grade II listed with a wonderful 19th century stone ornamental wall on two sides, an original water trough, a stone bench and a stone ledge. All of which were subject to restrictions imposed by the heritage listing.

Although the owner was keen to upgrade her terrace which had been decked some years before and bring a more contemporary look to it, we advised that anything too contemporary would not sit well with the original features of the terrace and what is more would not be approved for listed building consent. In addition, the other challenge in a relatively small space was to create a really good entertaining space with a large amount of seating and space for a large dining table so that large groups of friends and family could be accommodated.

The design solution was to create a really elegant terrace with some modern touches such as outdoor furniture, an L-shaped cupboard for serving food when the owner entertained and a classic but not overly traditional black horizontal trellis to replace the more old fashioned square trellis.

Lighting was to be major feature as the terrace would be used a great deal at night with the key feature plants uplit, shadow lighting behind the L-shaped cupboard, lighting under the benches and cross lighting from inside the planting containers.

Planting was kept to the minimum for ease of maintenance using large dove-grey planters with three feature size multi stemmed silver birch trees on the side bordering the communal gardens, some evergreen screening in front of the trellis and some grasses and square clipped Buxus in the other containers.

Plants list

Click on any of the plant names below to learn more about the plant and to add it to your own plants list

Prunus lusitanica
Taxus baccata
Buxus sempervirens
Alchemilla mollis
Pennisetum hameln
Euphorbia cyparissias 'Fen's Ruby'
Betula utilis var jacquemontii
Trachelospermum jasminoides
Clematis henryi

All photos by Light IQ