Masterclass with Helen Elks-Smith: Enhancing the Sense of Arrival

Date: Saturday, 15 May 2021

Time:  9.30am to 1.30pm (with regular breaks)

Where: Online Webinar

Cost: £39.99 (inclusive of admin fees)

A donation will be made from ticket sales to our chosen charities: Perennial - The Gardeners’ Royal Benevolent Society - the UK’s only charity dedicated to helping people who work in horticulture when times are tough and Veterans’ Growth - Improving Veterans’ mental health through horticulture.

Details
We often talk about journeys in and around gardens.  We talk of arrival, a sense of place and borrowed landscape.  Arrival is not simply landing at the  garden gate, it is also the spaces where we might pause and spend time within the garden.  How do we choose the best place to position a terrace?   That is rarely up against the house.  The route to those spaces is key to successful garden design.    How do we move someone’s feet, move someone out into the garden and to those sweet spots?  

Helen will also pay particular attention to the following:

• Establishing the client brief is an integral part of the design work.  Clients tend to provide a long wish list and often there is a mismatch with the budget.  Designers need to drill into this, what are the ‘must haves’ and what are the areas for compromise?   And what is the ‘budget’ – what is and is not included?  This needs to be established for this  client and this site.

• Site Analysis.  Poor site analysis often result in schemes that neither connect to the site, nor resolve existing problems.  Worse still proposed design can create new problems on that site with  that particular borrowed landscape. An inadequate understanding of site often leads to tension in the resulting scheme.

• Zoning a garden – This follows tightly on from site analysis and the brief.  Much of the construction cost is creating spaces where one might pause and spend time in the garden.  Making sure those spaces, the voids, are in the right place  with the right amount of enclosure, the mass, coupled with a sense of arrival, is fundamental.  Creating the connections between those spaces, the journey, is the final piece of the puzzle.

• Front gardens - quite rightly there has been much progress in reversing the rush to pave over our front gardens for cars.  Most days we use our front gardens.  The views from our front door as we head out into the world and when we arrive home all have the potential to impact how we feel.

Loyalty Discount

We are delighted to give a loyalty discount to everyone who is currently on our Course Emailing List by way of our sincere thanks for your ongoing support. Please email us if you fall within this category and have not as yet received a discount code for use with this booking.

About Helen Elks-Smith

Helen is known for her thoughtful approach to design and expertise in subtle, textural planting, Helen's work is informed by a lifelong love for landscape and an intuitive understanding of the way gardens make us feel. Creating timeless gardens that are sensitive to their location, she believes that a beautiful well-designed garden can have a hugely positive impact on our well-being

Helen was made a Fellow of the Society of Garden Designers for her outstanding contribution to the industry. She has won numerous awards including two RHS Gold medals and People’s Choice, three design awards from the Society of Garden Awards and two Design Excellence awards from BALI. Helen is one of the judges for the ProLandscaper Awards and has most recently appeared as one of the designers on BBC Two Your Garden Made Perfect.

Terms and conditions
Bookings are taken on a first come, first served basis.  We are not able to give refunds for cancellations.  However, you are welcome to nominate someone to take your place provided you have notified us of their name and contact details prior to commencement of the course. We reserve the right to cancel any course at any time.  In the rare event that we need to cancel a course, you will be contacted and given the option to receive a full refund of your payment or transfer to another course of the same value, subject to availability. 

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