This tiny, tranquil city sanctuary garden designed by Harry Holding makes the most of its shady situation

For this small London garden, designer Harry Holding has taken inspiration from the lush textures of tropical forests to create an urban woodland oasis.

In all aspects of design, the best exemplars don’t just make something look good, they make it work well too. And so it is with this garden design, by Harry Holding Studio, in Earl’s Court, London.

“We knew we were lucky to have a decent-size garden in inner city London,” says owner Tara Moss, who lives here with her husband and two teenage sons. “But we never really used the space before – it just didn’t work for us.”

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The garden’s previous layout featured an ugly, patchy lawn overhung by a mature acer and a cherry tree, which cast it in shade, but did little to screen the garden from the neighbours. A shed was positioned in the only sunny spot.

“We’d find ourselves huddled as close to it as we could get – it wasn’t particularly comfortable,” says Tara. Attracted to Harry’s work by pictures she’d seen of other lawnless gardens he’d designed, she commissioned him to make a space that the family would enjoy both being in and entertaining in.

Though Harry agreed the lawn and shed had to go, rather than looking to remove the trees, he chose to work with them, relishing the lush, mature atmosphere they create.

Harry took inspiration from the lush, green textures of tropical forests, adapting his choices to
suit the London microclimate.

“It was exciting to have a space that had good bones to work with,” he says. Also in the “good bones” camp was the beautiful old brick wall that surrounds the garden, to which he attached black-painted horizontal trellis for extra privacy. An existing paved terrace was also left as was. “The cost and the carbon footprint of ripping it out and replacing it would have been high,” says Harry. “We decided it was better to maximise our budget through the rest of the garden.”

The trees had previously been planted in brick raised beds and, while Harry wouldn’t normally opt for raised beds in such small space, here he decided to lean into the idea. By introducing more of them (albeit in Corten steel) and bringing them further into the space, he has given the garden more interest and mystery, preventing it from being seen all at once.

Of course, the planting adds to this and, since the clients are Australian, Harry took inspiration from the lush, green textures of the tropical forests there, adapting his choices to suit the London microclimate. He planted a river birch (Betula nigra) for additional canopy cover, and three tree ferns (Dicksonia antarctica) and a banana (Musa basjoo) as an eye-catching mid-layer, with a luxuriant underlayer of small shrubs (Pittosporum tobira ‘Nanum’), ferns (Dryopteris erythrosora), grasses (Hakonechloa macra) and resilient, shade-loving perennials.

Granite plank paving winds through the plants, leading to the generous seating area at the rear.

Granite plank paving, softened by vivid-green groundcover Soleirolia soleirolii, winds through the plants, leading to the generous seating area at the rear where the shed once stood. To shield it from neighbouring properties, this is framed by an elegant pergola structure across which star jasmine (Trachelospermum jasminoides) climbs.

Throughout, Harry has been careful to tie his design in with the dark, masculine decor of the house. The slim slats of the black dining furniture, from Hay’s Palissade range, along with the trellis on the wall and the shape of the pergola, all echo the window joinery, while the Corten steel planters and water feature pick up the russet of the tree ferns’ trunks beautifully.

“We can’t believe how well it’s all come together,” says Tara. “We eat outside, we entertain outside and I love how it feels like a little oasis – far away from the traffic and the noise. Most of all though, I love how much our boys use it. They’d pretty much stopped going out there before, now they’re in it all the time.

In brief