Gardens
Every photograph on this page is Chris's own, from gardens he has designed. Commissions have taken him to Tonbridge, Hadlow, Otford, Tatsfield and into South London, as well as around Royal Tunbridge Wells itself.
Long garden · axis and destination
A steel pergola set at the far end of a long garden, reached by rectangular stepping stones laid through the lawn. Borders of grasses, persicaria and hydrangea narrow the view and pull the eye to the seating at the top.
It is a fair illustration of how the layout stage works: a destination at the far end so the garden is crossed rather than looked at, stepping stones setting the pace, and borders narrowing the view so a long, thin plot reads as a sequence of spaces instead of a corridor.
Terracing and level changes, dining terraces, structure planting, mixed borders and meadow planting — all from gardens Chris has designed.
A pale sandstone path running the length of an enclosed town garden between deep mixed borders — catmint, box, Stipa and multi-stem birch — with a timber pergola and a planted pot closing the far end.
A change of level handled as a design feature rather than a problem: broad stone steps rising from a planted lower garden to a raised deck, with alliums and cow parsley loosening the edges of dark rendered walls.
A contemporary dining terrace under a tensioned canopy, with built-in brick and timber seating, dark-stained boundaries and lanterns hung through the planting so the space still works after dark.
Stepping stones crossing a small lawn towards the house, seen from a covered seating area — the layout giving the garden a route, a destination and somewhere to sit at either end of it.
Weathered steel arches standing in a loose, prairie-inflected border of Sanguisorba and grasses — structure that gives the planting something to grow against and the garden something to read in winter.
A long mixed border in late summer: crocosmia, heleniums and asters layered against grasses and acers, with mature trees behind holding the whole composition together.
Ox-eye daisies, verbena and ammi grown as a loose meadow against a brick façade — a front garden doing far more for the street, and for pollinators, than the gravel it replaced.
A perennial cornflower in flower beside its own seedheads, with the lawn and border running away behind — the sort of detail a planting plan is written to produce on purpose.
Photographs published by Chris Wild Garden Design. Captions describe what is in the picture; no client detail is given.
The approach
Soil, levels, drainage and aspect are settled before a single line is drawn. It is unglamorous and it is the reason a scheme still looks composed in its fifth year rather than its first. A garden designed on assumptions gets rebuilt; a garden designed on measurements gets enjoyed.
Any garden looks generous in June. The real measure is what you can see from the kitchen window in February — evergreen structure, considered shapes, bark and stems and seedheads doing the work. Structure goes on the plan before anything that flowers.
How you cross a garden decides how much of it you use. Stepping stones through lawn, a path that sets a pace, a terrace placed where the evening light actually falls — these are layout decisions, and they matter more than the plant list to how often the back door gets opened.
Three of something used five times down a border reads as a scheme. One of everything reads as a collection: interesting close up, restless from the house. A planting plan sets species, quantities and spacings so a border can be sourced and priced as a list rather than bought in a panic on a Saturday.
A master plan that a contractor can price and set out is worth more than a beautiful sketch that has to be interpreted. Construction plans and elevations exist so that decisions are made on the drawing board, not improvised on site with a digger idling.
There is no studio to be passed around. The designer who walks your garden is the one who surveys it, draws the concept, writes the planting plan and coordinates the build. Small practice, single thread — and a client who always knows who to ring.
A slope, heavy clay, deep shade, an awkward boundary, a view you want to keep — the constraint is usually where the design starts. Rated 5.0 on Google.