Design Tip: How to Use Pebbles in a Garden

What is essential for secret garden design? A sense of history? Naturalistic planting? The feeling you’ve discovered a place that’s been hidden for a long time? All these elements are to be found, skilfully incorporated by Anne Jennings of Viridian Landscape Design, in this small courtyard of a private Chelsea home.

The clients wanted a garden with the character of a lost and rediscovered treasure—a secret garden. It also, challengingly, had to include a playhouse for the children.

For a “rediscovered treasure”, nothing new could be used. Anne sought out antique urns, reclaimed distressed oak doors, reclaimed paving slabs, and reconstituted stone arches to create the sense of history. “The thing that drove it was, they wanted a playhouse, but to put a playhouse in a tiny garden made it very dominant.” The answer was a bespoke shepherd's hut, proportioned to fit the space and given a distressed finish. “That dominated the whole job. We got it proportionally right and everything swung from that.”

Anne arranged other elements to give the illusion that the garden (10.3 x 11.3 at its widest points) had remained hidden. The client had asked that as much of the ivy that clothed the boundary fence be kept as possible. To suggest a world behind the fence, Anne cunningly inserted an old factory window backed with mirror to create the impression of a hidden building. Behind the shepherd's hut, old oak doors—one partially open and backed with mirror—imply places beyond to be discovered. To increase the sense of history, she added reconstituted stone Gothic windows backed with mirror and clothed the entrance to the side passage with a Gothic arch.

Reclaimed Yorkstone, that classic British paving, was an obvious choice to support the design, imparting an immediate feeling that it was laid a long time ago. We handpicked the paving to ensure that it was all 50mm thick. This isn’t something that’s always necessary but this was a special situation. “The site was very congested,” says Anne, “and everything had to be completed very tidily and to schedule. Being all the same thickness makes the laying faster. Different thicknesses of paving slabs can also mean thick joints which can look ugly, so this helped reduce the thickness of the mortar.” Reclaimed Yorkstone doesn't, of course, come in uniform thickness, so we calibrated the coping and step treads to Anne's requested 50mm with a pencil-round edge profile. We also handpicked the paving to ensure that it was all 50mm thick. “The site was very congested,” says Anne, “and everything had to be completed very tidily and to schedule; being all the same thickness makes the laying faster. Different thicknesses of paving slabs can also mean thick joints which can look ugly, so this helped reduce the thickness of the mortar.”

Secret gardens need to feel established. So, for immediate maturity, the owner requested large trees. After gaining a licence to close the road, Viridian had two whitebeams, a crab apple, flowering cherry and multi-stemmed dogwood craned in around the plane trees in the street and over the four-storey house. The result is an unusual design that will continue to evolve. As the trees grow, the garden will become shadier. The climbers are spreading and gaps between the paving are already being colonised by Anne's choice of Mind Your Own Business, increasing the mise-en-scène of a venerable garden where plants have grown up through the cracks.

It's been a once-in-a-lifetime project. “Gardens now have a certain look—all engineered cut stone,” says Anne. “It's been a lovely brief. I've trawled through reclamation yards, got lots of creeping plants. I'll never get another brief like it. I'm really pleased with it for that reason alone.” Short-listed for the Society of Garden Designers' Small Residential Garden and People's Choice awards 2016, this magical garden gained a BALI award for Design Excellence for a Scheme over £50,000. Anne, who set up Viridian Landscape Design with Andrew Halksworth in 2013, describes herself “dead chuffed”. “For various reasons, it's taken me a lot of years to apply for BALI and SGD membership,” she adds. “There's an arduous application process—and I got through on the first attempt. This was the first time I'd entered for the awards.” We think you'll agree there are lots of reasons to congratulate Anne on a super result. Find more designs using reclaimed Yorkstone on our product page. Not sure you need reclaimed paving? Check out more ideas for garden paving and how to go about planning a small town garden. Post updated: August 2023