This costal garden has very differing aspects. On the inland side, as you arrive you travel through a glade of beech trees underplanted with woodland ephemerals and wonderful bulbs. This area is mostly sheltered, but the next, between the main house and the guest cottage has protection from the sea blast too, but here we’ve started to make the connection with the ocean, emulating waves with an undulating lawn beneath a grid of crab apples, and in the planting just behind the house, which is full of airy plants which catch the light like sea spray. We’ve connected the buildings with a path made from the round pebbles found on site which are knitted together with creeping thyme, the pebbles showing where you walk, and the thyme taking over where the feet don’t tread. This divides the rolling lawn from the flat one, where three fabulous, oversized topiary beech trees sit, to give weight and to balance the orchard on the other side. It was inspiration from the local agricultural landscape which led us to the planting of grids of fruit and the rows of vines. On the ocean side, a very simple palette of plants comes from the indigenous plants on the dunes, organised in the form of an informal knot pattern, they blur the boundaries between wild and gardened. We brought sand right up into the garden on this side to make the connection even more immediate, so that nothing detracts from the beauty of the wild view beyond.