The garden is rhomboid and had been awkwardly divided into four sections. The resulting angles were unsatisfactory. To overcome this problem, we took the central point and worked outwards, starting with the Marian Garden – a star surrounded by a pleached hornbeam hedge, underplanted with holly, and softened with different grasses. There are virtually no straight lines in this garden and by using curves the garden seems bigger. You can’t see round corners, so there is always a sense of ‘what is next?’. During the design process, the owners gave me this poem, which begins:

When no one listens To the quiet trees When no one notices The sun in the pool. Where no one feels The first drop of rain