Making a contemporary entrance in Southborough

The house is built in a highly contemporary style on the outskirts of Tunbridge Wells. Its glass walls reflect the surrounding gardens beautifully, and sedum roof grows into an abundance of colours every summer. The main garden was well planned when it was originally created with herbaceous borders, and decking pathways flanking the footprint of the house looking out onto extensive lawns , punctuated by carefully positioned mature weeping willows, and graceful Himalayan Birches.

Our task was to create a new driveway entrance and feature outdoor courtyard to welcome visitors as they approach the main entrance doorway. This the client wanted to reflect the glamour of the house and standard of the interior gardens. The exterior of the house is marked by a long wall some 40m long that stretches from the main door entrance down to the road beyond. Hugging the wall was a raised unfinished roadstone track that had been used as the main drive. To its edge the  roadstone  morphed into a grass farm track and then onto the fields beyond. The existing arrangement was austere, somewhat industrial in its finish, with huge unbroken expanses of brick and the grey roadstone, the only other interesting architectural feature was a huge sliding corten steel door that provided access to the main rear garden and framed the borrowed landscape.

The track was unstable and needed a lot of levelling before it could support a proper driveway surface. Apart from the borrowed landscape there was precious little attempt to soften the starkness of the entrance with any planting or creative lighting.

Our solution was to address the structure and level of the existing driveway by building an outer reinforced ‘H’ block wall to retain the surface, this was buried below the ground level, then the driveway surface relevelled and compacted to line up with this. The outer edge of the ‘H’ block wall was disguised by a new earth bank reformed to create a wider border for planting and to take fresh services for lighting and irrigation.

The vast wall now features carefully positioned Corten Steel panels that break up the expanse, and at night provide cover plates for dramatic up and down lighters, provide practical assistance to any visitors and play an interesting warm light pattern across the brick surface. Corten steel is also featured in a new 1.6meter high driveway entrance pillar strategically situated opposite the start of the wall. A metal slit in its top provides the recess for a led strip light that marks the beginning of the drive and sets the scene for what’s beyond.

A thick Corten steel edge then runs the length of the driveway until the sunken courtyard entrance starts. This provides the edge to the detail of the new driveway surface which is compacted Type One. With a translucent grid layer that doubles up as a weed membrane and takes the soft looking attractive Yorkshire Cream aggregate that now forms the top dressing. This is highlighted in key areas with sandstone setts.

Beyond the Corten steel edging detail, the side of the driveway now has a grass bank. Topped with Portuguese Laurel hedge and a series of feathered hornbeam standards, all lit at night by Colindale spike lights. We have also installed an irrigation system to water in the hedge and give added nourishment to the trees. 

This brings us to the courtyard entrance. When we conceived this we wanted to recreate the essence of a vast entrance hallway . A welcoming effect, that was dramatic and warm and cosy despite it being outside!  Our theme for this and the whole scheme was Mediterranean so this was another consideration.

To help emphasize the entrance and create the desired effect we designed the courtyard as a sunken feature accessed via a series of steps down from the driveway and up to the sliding corten doorway. The layering created by the steps extends to create planting areas on different levels. In the main bed we sourced an old knarled olive tree, planting around this evergreen  ferns, lavender and salvias. Plus a low border hedge created from euonymus japonicus.

Lower levels of planting are formed from Portuguese laurel hedging and further euonymus japonicus. Centred in the courtyard is a Corten steel water table surrounded by hakonechloa macra , which when mature will form a nice soft border contrasting well with the rusty patina of the water feature.

The surfaces in the courtyard have been designed in a soft limestone to blend with other stone around the house and the Yorkshire Cream decorative aggregate of the driveway.