Terraced Garden, Kirkcaldy

The owners of this front terraced garden, in Dysart, wanted to make it more inviting, practical and easy to maintain. They also wanted the garden to be in a traditional style, with a simple planting scheme, incorporating some of the existing vegetation.

The garden was steeply sloping, covered with gravel and with two small lawns on each side. There were steps leading from the bottom, with a slabbed pathway towards the house and then borders of mixed evergreens beside the house. Overall, the garden was lacking in character and was unusable.

It is always a challenge to landscape a garden on a slope with limited access, which is why we decided to work with the existing soil and to minimise its removal as much as possible.

The concept for the garden was to create individual, clearly divided areas of patio, with artificial lawn and beautifully planted borders in between. A series of mortarless retaining walls allowed the slope to be modified and made more of the garden usable. Moreover, some of the steps were rebuilt and slatted panels were added to give privacy.

For the patio, steps and paths around the house, we used a natural sandstone paving, finished with gravel. Two mid terraces included artificial grass lawns.