Coastal Garden - East Sussex

Status | Completed Spring 2025

The Watch house is an historic Grade 2 listed property on the coast near Rye & Camber Sands. Construction of a new studio/bedroom annexe required a re-imagining of the garden to bring it back to life and integrate it with the house.

The clients wanted a low-maintenance modern coastal garden that reflected its location. The new studio building creates a courtyard garden that is in use year-round therefore the garden needed to look good at all times.

The design takes its inspiration from the shingle dunes and rugged wind-shaped plants of the nearby nature reserve. Enhancing the height changes across the garden created a new undulating topography and dune-scape. Paths and dunes are all covered in graded gravel from a local quarry to create a modern gravel garden that is compatible with its surroundings.

This is contrasted with crisp modernist terraces that provide flexible entertainment and relaxation spaces for the clients. Large format concrete pavers provide a strong structure and a year-round path to the studio.

This is softened by repeated waves of pruned evergreen shrub planting that combined with new multi-stem trees provide screening and add depth to the space. They also create a dramatic contrast to the transparency of naturalistic grasses and large blocks of long flowering herbaceous plants that create an extended period of interest throughout the year.

Wide planks of vertical black painted fencing create screening from wind and combined with other bespoke detailing designed for the garden pay homage to the local fishing vernacular that forms such a key part of the history of the property.

The furniture was specially selected for the garden in an iron-red to contrast with the black weatherboarding and to create a focal point amongst the green of the plants.

Size | 300m2

Architect | England Architecture

Photography | Nicholas Morton© Copyright