This small city garden comprises two gardens, each reflecting the split personality of this exciting modern warehouse conversion. Whilst one half reflects the Victorian character of an old coach house on the site; adopting elements of a Victorian pleasure garden, the second garden surrounds a new steel framed living space. Plantings of mature hornbeam panels, a multi-stemmed acer campestre and buxus mounds give the garden instant drama.
We have been working on this garden for the last five years, restoring and redesigning the gardens and parkland around a Georgian country house. The gardens sit atop a hill with views over woods and a lake to the Pennines beyond. Formal green entrance gardens give way to herbaceous borders and stream gardens.
Surrounded on three sides by arable land this windswept garden in Hampshire sits at the foot of a Semaphore tower, originally used to send messages from the Admiralty in London to Portsmouth. The garden was designed to feel as though the crops had blown across the garden, self seeding an array of grasses and butter and russet coloured perennials. Structure was added in the form of mature beech hedges creating windbreaks and sheltered seating areas.
Perched on a cliff above the Mediterranean, this new garden is surrounded by a dramatic landscape of wild terebinth, rosemary, pittosporum and olive, sculpted into mounds by strong winter winds. Eating terraces and sunbathing decks surround the swimming pool, giving way to formal lawns and mature olive avenues. The planting palette is borrowed from the landscape blurring the garden's edges, muted greens and textures setting the tone.
In Walberswick, this 1/3 acre garden surrounds a New England style house. Evoking the reed beds of the Suffolk landscape the garden is heavily dependent upon grasses, with further structure added by dozens of box spheres. In time, the garden will be dominated by huge sculpted quercus ilex mounds. It includes rendered walls to define spaces and a rill.
Working alongside the Interior Designer Kelly Hoppen, the brief for her own garden was a sophisticated, minimal entertaining space in central London. We combined painted decks, poured concrete panels and painted slatted trellis in the same colour to create a great textural effect. The garden has an evergreen backbone of buxus mounds and fastigiate hornbeams add height.
A light touch was needed when we restored this barn garden, carved out of a field on the edge of the South Downs National Park. Low walls constructed with local Fittleworth stone gave the garden much needed enclosure. Meadow plantings and native hedgerows were added to soften the gardens boundaries. An enclosed courtyard garden combined box forms and reclaimed cobbles in a grid patte
My own garden in London has been an experimental space for eight years. A south west facing walled garden, it is large enough to accommodate eating terraces lined with black painted brick walls, shade areas for spring interest and south facing vegetable and perennial borders. A long gracious curving gravel path bisects the garden in two.
Deep in the West Sussex countryside this garden around an old farm includes a lime walk through perennial borders, a topiary garden and a walled vegetable garden. Overlooking surrounding fields we created a perennial meadow using ornamental grasses and hot coloured perennials planted in deep geometric borders. A later barn garden included pollarded willows and gravel planting.
A stone's throw from the Royal Hospital Chelsea this secret garden is landlocked behind a row of workers cottages, reached through a tunnel scented with jasmine. The current owner added a modern extension to the tiny cottage, and our brief was to integrate the two. Box panels and beech hedges frame the main doorway, revealing scented green and white borders as you approach the house. The proportions around the new wing are more spacious, allowing for areas of lawn, portland stone terraces and rendered walls which provide a clean uncluttered space.
The honey coloured stonework of this former gate house provides a superb backdrop to this garden. A series of gardens rich in perennials and grasses merge the garden and surrounding meadows wonderfully. Windows of pleached hornbeam, box mounds and beech hedges define the space and add year round structure. Ongoing projects include a modern swimming pool garden and pavilion.
This family garden around a lighthouse on the norfolk coast was planned around a new box extension hanging from the side of the lighthouse. Attached to this we added a floating hardwood chill out deck, giving on to play lawns and eating terraces. The informal planting is bisected by a mature box spine.
The main body of this garden was an original elevated walled garden on two sides overlooking the South Downs. On a very exposed site, box pleached hornbeams were planted to envelop the space creating living windows, lowering the boundary wall in places to create a Ha Ha. Traditional herbaceous borders along the garden's length lead to a contemporary slate pool and grass plantings. Further projects included vegetable gardens, a natural pond and a simple geometric entrance garden design of lawn and portland stone panels and yew barrels.
This garden needed a new life! From the main viewing terrace the garden falls away in a series of terraces, each with its own character, from flower gardens, shaded banks, vegetable terraces, orchards and an oval marquee lawn. Whilst the garden has an exciting contemporary tone, the use of reclaimed materials- yorkstone, ironstone panels and purbeck walling means it sits comfortably alongside the 19th century buildings.
Work on this recently restored "mas" in the foothills of Mont Ventoux in northern Provence involved restoring existing gardens, providing for the needs of a growing family. Nestling in a clearing of oak woodland the garden suffers from harsh weather extremes and strong winds. Sheltered terraces were needed for each time of day and throughout the year. Recreating traditional landforms, the garden's fulcrum is a new semi circular "aire de terrain" traditionally used for drying grain and olives. From here banks of rosemary and cercis lead to a cuisine d'ete and fruit allees lead to surrounding woodland.
The Lladro "Sensuality" Garden designed by Chris Moss and Fiona Lawrenson won a Gold medal at the 2003 Chelsea Flower Show. A simple contemporary architectural design was overlaid with sumptuous herbaceous planting, including old fashioned shrub roses, paeonies and iris. The garden featured sculptural glass panels, Portland stone, Lakeland slate walling and lime rendered walls.
Photos by Helen Fickling [www.helenfickling.com]
This garden was designed around two existing olive trees which set the tone for the garden. Clean rendered walls, Portuguese limestone panels, a water table and stone topped seating plinths are softened by a series of square borders packed with perennials, bulbs and grasses. With a backdrop of silver birch chosen for their stems and hornbeam for their candle like form, the garden's winter skeletal structure is as exciting as its abundance of summer colour.
The brief for this restoration project of a seven acre formal garden on a large estate was to create a contemporary garden with heavy perennial planting for year round interest.
Respecting the garden's original layout of formal terraces, we added mediterranean gravel borders around the main entertaining terraces, rose and herbaceous borders around the croquet lawn. Formal box gardens of platforms and mounds around the house are counterbalanced by an acre of garden given over to looser perennials planted in deep curving beds leading to a natural swimming pool. A turf amphitheatre around an orangery designed by Ian Adam Smith Architects and a formal potager, courtyard and entrance forecourt gardens were also designed.
Originally asked to work on the existing cottage garden some 12 years ago, the garden has since become a series of garden rooms. The garden is continually evolving with recent additions including a swimming pool anchored in a stone amphitheatre, a crinkle-crankle, vegetable gardens, a barn garden and further tree planting in the meadows.
The restoration of this Arts and Crafts garden incorporates new terraces, walled vegetable garden and greenhouse, woodland gardens and formal entrance garden. Originally marooned in a sea of gravel, the house now sits comfortably surrounded by formal lawns bisected by wide stone walkways. A crab apple and box garden line the driveway.
Chris Moss has been designing gardens for over 15 years. He joined a leading garden design and build contractor in 1995 working on both domestic and commercial projects. After studying at Merrist Wood College, he joined Fiona Lawrenson in 1998, designing prestigious private gardens and show gardens worldwide.
Chris set up a London based studio in 2004 and design work has since taken him across the UK, Europe and the Middle East.
Our gardens are characterised by the subtle layering of hard landscaping elements, solid "green" architecture and a soft overlay of herbaceous planting. We work in both modern and traditional spheres and delight in combining the two in a creative and imaginative way. Above all we work closely with each client to design spaces that are appropriate to them and which reflect their tastes and their dreams as well as their demands on their garden.
We like to supervise the construction and planting of our gardens, and to ensure the eventual success of the design we aim to maintain an ongoing relationship with our gardens by overseeing or advising on their maintenance.
A hands-on knowledge of garden construction, a vast knowledge of plants, an obsessive interest in architecture and design, and a simple passion for gardening, make our gardens practical, inspirational and unique.
June 2016 : Homes & Gardens
We are really pleased that our Wimbledon garden photographed by Helen Fickling in 2008 has been featured in the June 2016 issue of Homes and Gardens. [click for more images]
November 2015 : The Garden
The RHS journal, The Garden, has featured our Little Venice garden as part of their Urban Gardens edition. [click for more images]
November 2015 : The English Garden
We are delighted that a piece featuring one of our gardens photographed in Autumn, has made the front cover of the November issue of the English Garden Magazine. [click for more images]
July 2015 : House & Garden
House & Garden are featuring our Stockwell garden in the August issue. Pictures by Marcus Harpur. [click for more images]
May 2015 : The English Garden
The Lighthouse garden in Norfolk is featured in the May issue of The English Garden magazine. [click for more images]
February 2015 : BBC Two Gardeners World
Look out for my own garden in Stockwell which will be featured on BBC Two Gardeners' World in March. [click for more images]
November 2014 : Gardenista
Really excited that US website Gardenista have posted a piece on their blog featuring my garden in Stockwell.
[click for more images]
August 2014 : Gardens Illustrated
Gardens Illustrated have featured Chris' own garden in South London - entitled His Dark Materials... [click for more images]
March 2014 : House & Garden
Our Little Venice garden appears in the March 2014 issue of House & Garden magazine. The garden was completed three years ago and was photographed last summer by Marcus Harpur. [click for more images]
September 2013 : New London Landscape
Our competition entry entitled New Garden Squares appears on the New London Landscape website. The competition sought green infrastructure ideas inspired by the High Line for London competition. [click for more images]
August 2013 : Marcus Harper
Marcus Harpur has recently photographed our Stockwell Garden. [click for more images]
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