The Savills Garden 2006

Designed for the RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2006, The Savills Garden was awarded a Gold Medal - Marcus Barnett's second at Chelsea.

Inspired by the elegant restraint of Mies van der Rohe's Modernist architecture, and particularly the Farnsworth House, completed in 1951 in Plano, Illinois, the garden explored architecture, structure and stillness through a contemporary landscape composition.

The designers sought to pay homage to the clean lines of Modernism while encouraging visitors to see Modernist-inspired design through fresh eyes. The garden also explored the idea of contrast as a means of creating harmony: between architecture and nature, structure and softness, enclosure and openness, and hard and soft landscaping.

The garden was conceived as a private, enclosed space. Its entrance was framed by white-stemmed Himalayan birch (Betula utilis var. jacquemontii), which led visitors onto a polished concrete pathway. The geometric path meandered through trees and layered perennial planting before crossing the water and arriving at a Modernist loggia at the rear of the garden. Designed as a place of refuge and entertaining, the pavilion formed the architectural focus of the composition and gave the journey through the garden a clear destination.

The planting combined fine grasses, including Luzula nivea and Stipa tenuissima, with the bold, textured foliage of Rodgersia pinnata. Vertical accents were provided by white foxgloves, while drifts of Iris sanguinea 'Snow Queen' created another important feature within the planting.

More structural elements were introduced through a line of clipped Buxus sempervirens cubes extending from the loggia into the garden. These echoed the strong horizontal lines of the architecture and created both a visual and metaphorical connection between the hard and soft elements of the landscape.