Infinity & BEYOND
Laura Heybrook has pulled off a very clever trick with her small family garden in Oxfordshire, playing with scale and perspective to produce a space that appears to have no beginning or end
WORDS ARABELLA ST JOHN PARKER PHOTOGRAPHS MMGI/BENNET SMITH
With its exuberant colours and textures and artful mixture of formality and informality, the outdoor haven that garden designer Laura Heybrook has created behind her family’s Victorian semi-detached villa in Oxford fizzes with energy and interest. It is a testament to her love of plants and romantic expression, and through her skilful use of scale and perspective it is a perfect example of how to use planting to make an urban postage-stamp plot look and feel four times its size.
“I wanted the garden to have a rhythm, a bit like a lovely song, and for there to be movement, and I wanted there to be a sense of never quite knowing where things begin and where they end,” says Laura. Her clients include private individuals and commercial clients in Britain and overseas, and her charitable partners include the Berkshire, Buckinghamshire & Oxfordshire Wildlife Trust’s education centre in Sutton Courtenay.
“The layout is asymmetrical and off centre in relation to the house,” she continues, “with narrow paths of gravel that invite you to explore and discover what lies beyond. The boundaries are softened or obscured with climbing roses and ivies, shrubs and small trees so that you ask yourself, ‘What’s behind? Can I go any further?’”
At the heart of the garden, topiaried pyramids, cubes, and balls of Buxus sempervirens rise majestically above a sea of perennials and annuals, like the university city’s famed dreaming spires emerging through an early morning mist. At their feet, instead of peopled streets, mat-forming thyme and self-seeded primroses, cow parsley and Allium ‘Summer Drummer’ bubble through the gravelled paths and, near the house, in between the large slabs of old York stone that Laura has used to create a small terrace.
“I like height and I love a plant party,” says Laura. “The palette is very insect-friendly and to begin with I started with pale pink roses – my absolute favourite – but in the west light they looked washed out, so I switched to oranges and yellows and bold pinks, using roses such as the alas-discontinued magenta-red ‘Darcey Bussell’.
“I also love classic old roses, but now I’ve
