Jo and Paul Aylin’s overgrown Wimbledon plot has been cleared to create a HASSLE-FREE HAVEN
Festuca glauca
Typha minima
After a stunning kitchen extension was added to the back of their house, complete with a full wall of glass sliding doors, Jo Aylin and husband Paul realised they couldn’t ignore their problem garden anymore as it was now on full show. “Before the extension was built, we could really only see the garden when the backdoor was open,” says Jo. And the garden itself was fast becoming a no-go zone. The boundary bushes had grown so big they took up most of the space, plus all the decking boards were rotten and dangerous to walk on. “Sitting indoors in our lovely new kitchen and looking out to the garden made us realise something quite drastic was needed,” she adds.
Back when they first moved into the house 17 years ago, the 9m x 6m plot was a tiny patch of grass bordered by boundary hedges, so the couple had it landscaped with decking, a small pond with fish, and two big palm trees. This worked well for them and son Zeke, and was pretty easy to manage. But over time those hedges encroached on the lawn and, once Paul – a keen cyclist – had squeezed in two sheds to house his cycles, the garden seemed to grow smaller and smaller until it was a space that simply wasn’t usable anymore.
BEFORE
At the end runs the track for the District tube line, the trains of which could be seen, and heard. “We’d originally planted jasmine climbers to help block the noise, but they grew and eventually took up too much space,” explains Jo.
DESIGN IDEALS
Although their house is Edwardian, the couple wanted the new garden to match their modern extension and for it to be quiet and calming, and pretty low-maintenance as they both work full-time. “We knew what we wanted the garden to become, but also knew we’d never do it ourselves,” says Jo. “We didn’t have the knowledge, expertise or time.”
They searched online and asked four local designers to pitch, choosing Katerina Kantalis (katerinakantalis.co.uk) as the couple felt she really listened to their thoughts and brought lots of clever ideas to the table. “We really liked the way she took on board what we wanted but added a why and a how, so we understood what we were asking for and if that was the best option,” explains Jo. “And if it wasn’t, then Katerina came up with lots of other examples that could work better.”
PLANNING THE DREAM
“As a garden designer, it’s great to be able to go in and create something completely new and different, almost from scratch,”
