National Landscaping Award Success for Outdoor Creations
We’re absolutely thrilled to have been awarded a top accolade at the Association of Professional Landscapers (APL) Awards 2021, supported by headline sponsor Bradstone. We came out winners for ‘Best Garden Feature’, for our work on the Sussex Kitchen Garden project, with judges commenting:
“The Moon gate is a beautiful stand out feature with lots of character, executed beautifully showcasing great skill.”
The awards, hosted virtually on Friday 12 March 2021, are recognised nationwide, and are a testament to the high calibre of landscaping offered by APL members. Now in their 26th year, the APL awards recognise and promote the very best in landscaping undertaken by members, in categories ranging from smaller projects, special features and soft landscaping, to contracts over £250,000. They are a celebration of the high standards that have been achieved by members and demonstrate the APL’s commitment to quality landscaping. ‘Best Garden Feature’, is an incredibly challenging category given the great work and innovation being seen across the industry, and we’re honoured to have been recognised as key contributors to this.
For this project, the client was keen to create a kitchen garden from which they could live sustainably, growing their own vegetables, herbs and fruit and also keep chickens. The design delivered a beautiful, circular, walled garden safe from foxes and deer, with a wonderful, moon gate entrance and bespoke ironwork gated entrance, incorporating a design by the client’s daughter.
The previous fencing surrounding the garden was replaced with a less obtrusive alternative to open up the views across the landscape, and along the walls of the garden, planting pockets were created for growing espalier fruit trees and tender fruit, aided by the circular structure of the build which creates it’s own microclimate within the kitchen garden. The Alitex greenhouse (pictured above) was carefully positioned to provide the best growing conditions, and the moongate really added to the view, with it’s bespoke ironwork feature designed by the clients daughter.
Paths between the vegetable beds were created from self-binding gravel to allow for expansion of the planting borders into new spaces within the kitchen garden, with an area also segregated to allow the chickens to run freely, with multi-stemmed hazel providing a sustainable resource for future plant supports by coppicing the stems in the future. Beyond the kitchen garden, compost bins are dug into the hillside and informal shrubby planting was added to allow for foraging of blackthorn and elder berries. In front of the kitchen garden an orchard was planted, providing a range of fruit from apples to plums and of course wonderful spring colour. Further to this, a wildflower lawn was planned to increase biodiversity in the wider landscape, with additional trees planted for water attenuation and for future generations enjoyment.
Tough weather conditions, throughout one of the wettest winters on record, led to a very challenging environment throughout the majority of the build, which the client alluded to in this glowing testimonial upon completion of the project:
“Your team worked tirelessly and constantly impressed me with their work ethic and enthusiasm. It was nice that every single one of them would say good morning to me. Having had lots of building work done over the years I know how rare this can be; but I also know how important it is to have someone just say “good morning’ when you are in your own house or garden. During heavy rain and ridiculously boggy conditions they all kept a smile!”
We’re absolutely thrilled that all of our hard work has paid off, and would like to say a huge thanks to everyone involved, especially Mark our steel fabricator, and the guys at Alitex and Chelmer Valley for supplying us with materials for this project. But a special thanks goes out to Heather Martin for her incredible design work, whom without this would not have been possible. Thanks for all your support guys, and we look forward to working with you all some more in the future!
Follow us on Instagram @outdoor.creations, or on Twitter @outdoor_c for further updates!
Visit www.landscaper.org.uk to find APL members in your area, or follow the APL on Twitter @The_APL.
The Association of Professional Landscapers represents landscapers who meet a required standard of professionalism. Members of the Association are registered with the government endorsed TrustMark Scheme. They are regularly inspected and agree to follow a customer charter with clients. The APL is part of the Horticultural Trades Association which is the trade Association for the UK gardening industry. It is dedicated to helping develop the industry and its member businesses, including most garden centres and other garden retailers, growers, landscapers, manufacturers and service providers. www.landscaper.org.uk