Kennington Road Garden

This garden by an architect/landscape architect couple was open under the National Garden Scheme mid-August. It demonstrates an understated and ingenious use of materials, while cramming a lot of function and interest  into a small London back garden.Cor-Ten steel (see posting on Andy Sturgeon at Chelsea) forms a rill from the end of the garden with water falling into the pond outside the basement bedroom. The red oxide layer contrasts pleasingly with the green.  The steel's welded straightness and simplicity of form is juxtaposed satisfyingly with both the slate shapes embedded in the path, and the large, exotic foliage texture around the pool.  Rusted construction steel rods bent in arcs continue the theme.                                                                      

There is really lovely late summer planting, with cactus Dahlia, Rudbeckia, the fine grass Stipa tenuissima and possibly S. gigantea, and also Sedum spectabile beginning to come into its own.

On the terrace, beautifully simple forms