Surrounded by yards with high fences, Higham House opens its arms to the street, inviting connection and conversation. Designed for clients who love to garden, this project aimed to connect the clients to their community while providing interest and beauty in the plants that envelop the home.
Gardens connect us with nature, and they can connect us with our neighbourhood. This was a core value of the clients: to create a space where neighbours would feel welcome to stop and chat as they walked by. For this reason, the design doesn’t include a front fence to enclose. Instead, it is bursting forth towards the street with foliage, textures, and seasonal colours, which serve to soften the inward facing house as well as to invite connection with the community.
The garden needed to work hard to create visual impact from the street, to provide a beautiful space to garden in throughout the seasons, and to soften the strong lines of the house. The design of the rear garden also needed to work hard to soften the structures and height of the house, as well as the retaining. The small, sloping site required a large site cut to ensure space for a pool and for entertaining. The foliage spills over path edges and softly mounds in form while the climber growing on the pergola drapes down, creating a curtain of green.
