Our client brief was to design a wheelchair accessible family garden, that would allow access to a steeply sloping garden yet also meet the needs of a young family.
The Brief – Wheelchair Accessible Garden Design
Our client brief was to design an accessible garden, that would suit a young family but also provide access to another family member who was a wheelchair user.
This was a very difficult and complex site. In part due to the very sloping and tapering layout all the way from the back to the front of the garden. An upper car deck also dominated the view line from the house.
The only way to ensure wheelchair accessibility, was to design a series of terraced ramps. Some of the width of the garden also had to accommodate new retaining walls to either side.
Planting for slopes and terraces
Gardens on sloping sites can be difficult to maintain, but a creative approach to planting design can transform this problem into an opportunity. Our well designed, bold and beautiful planting scheme focussed on different heights, textures and colours, adding distinctive areas of interest to lead the eye around the garden and really bring it alive, while softening the necessary hard landscaping.
Materials specification
It was important that the view to the upper car deck did not dominate the garden. So we opted for screening of full height floral concrete blocks. Typically associated with a 70’s aesthetic – if they are used well they look great and the repeating pattern is wonderful at distracting the eye.
Blue Pennant Sandstone is native to the area. It has a blue grey colour with wonderful rich brown iron oxide deposits in it. So we specified it in the form of stone slips to veneer the concrete block retaining walls. As well as irregular paving to the patio areas and walkways / ramps.
Aesthetically it was important that the garden did not appear dominated by masonry, in order to maintain visual variety and interest. Because of this we specified the lawn retainer, and the planting retainers for the accessibility ramps in Cor-ten steel. This oxidises to an amazing rich reddy brown colour which compliments the iron oxides in the Blue Pennant Sandstone veneers and paving.
We included a pond-less water feature of the same type of Blue Pennant Sandstone in rockery stone. This type of water feature requires less maintenance and is safer because there is no pool of standing water. Which may otherwise pose a risk to young children.
You can learn more about Blue Pennant Sandstone HERE