Countess of Brecknock Hospice Gardens, Andover
Completing Spring 2020
Visualisations by Morse Webb Architects
Design
From each bedroom doors lead out onto a semi-private terrace with a slatted cedar screen for climbing plants and decked seating area; a paved path links the individual terraces with a resin-bonded gravel pathway. This pathway allows easy access for wheelchair users, enabling visitors and residents alike to enjoy the gardens. Stepping stone paths cut across lawns to encourage further exploration and the lawns are broken up with hedges and borders creating smaller, more private spaces within the gardens. Sculptures integrating water create focal points through the space.
Planting
A structure to the garden will be created with beech hedging providing backdrops to the planted borders and dividing the large garden into smaller, more intimate spaces. Groups of Prunus serrula 'Tibetica' and Betula utilis var. Jacquemontii 'Snow Queen' provide high level screening from surrounding buildings and create areas of dappled shade which will be under-planted with spring bulbs and shade-loving perennials including Geranium phaeum 'Album' & Tellima grandiflora. Repeated large swathes of grasses such as Miscanthus sinensis 'Kleine Fontäne' and Calamagrostis 'Waldenbuch' combined with Verbena bonariensis and Veronicastrum virginicum 'Fascination' create height and movement through the garden. Interest is maintained into the winter with the coloured bark of trees and shrubs such as Cornus sanguinea 'Midwinter Fire' and the seed heads of alliums and grasses.