Ham House visit

Ham house visit gave an interesting insite to see the way landscape design has been changed and influenced throughout time. Ham House has symmetrical gardens and rigid lines of planting which still have an impressive visual impact.
Ham House was built in 1610 and further extended in the 1670's. It was originally home to the Duchess of Lauderdale who was known as a political activist, the house became the the heart of the civil War in the 17th century.





Amoung the Houses many garden are the Cherry gardens to the east of the house, which are a visual delight when looking at the garden. The cherry garden features lavender parterres flanked by two vaulted trellises of peach hornbeam and a ststue of Bacchus at its heart. the contrast of colours in such a symmetrical garden design really show what can be achieved with such a small planting pallet.







On the south terrace gardens the planting consist of cones of alternating yew trees with clipped flower shrubs. there are three rows of herbaceous plantings to complete the effect.
lying further south of the terrace is the wilderness a formal style planting of hedges to create a maze like effect in a symmetrical pattern. Central to all the planting of Ham House is the axial relationship everything is design to, inspired by the palace of Versaille in France.





Ham House is an intrigue to view such an old design still standing today and yet it still has some relevance such as simple planting effects bold shapes and colours can have.

Focus Week 4 The Urban Landscape

The final focus week was used for helping to evolve my understanding of urban design and landscapes and in doing so help improve my landscape projects.

The new City Hall building on the Thames riverside was a good example to me of a public space with a distictive urban landscape surrounding it, the ampitheatre known as The Scoop with steep steps surrounding the entrance create a sense of focus and grandure and also can double up as seating, while the rest of the surroundings are contemporary with street art and sculptures to improve the asthetics.

Another site I visited was Triton Square, the Home of Abbey National bank and some award winning Urban Landscape design.



The Square has some of the most interestng shapes to help captivate the busy space it inhabits. There is a wave form lawn set in granite boxes, parallel on eithe side of the square and the most unusal tree planter, which is suspended above the square in a steel box and contains four small identical trees.

The seating is also interesting spiralling like a snail shell into one giant bench. The lighting at night is one of the most dramatic features and brings a new dimension to the site.

The site is an inspiring design and shows what can be done with such a small urban space, using shapes and patterns as well as lighting to bring a space to life.

Focus Week 3 parks and space

Focus week 3 was spent looking at some of the open spaces and Royal parks of London including Richmond Park, Kensington Gardens, St James's Park, Regents Park and Hyde Park.

Each of the parks and spaces has its own appeal, Richmond Park has large open plains, ponds and wooded areas compared to a park with limited space such as Regents Park which still serves as many people.

The experience of looking at these spaces has helped to widen my views as to how a park is designed to cope with the demand upon its spaces and resouces both natural and man made.

Focus Week 2 Learning photoshop

The object of this focus week for myself, was aimed more at improving my use of computer software particularly photoshop which is a creative editing programme.

The focus week started slowly, progress was difficult because I was using a new piece of software and knowing little of how it opperated. As the focus week went on I began to grasp some of the fundamentals and used this to do basic editing of my images.

The images posted are some of the first I used for editing and this aided my projects because I was able to remove what I didnt want and keep the focus on what I wanted.

Because of the learning experience of the focus week I was able to add what I learned and expand on it to create images for all my landscape projects.

Focus Week 1 conservation and sustainability

The first of four focus weeks was spent helping a voluntary organisation BTCV.
BTCV is a conservation group with some 130000 voluntary members and is part of the London Heathland Heritage Project.

Myself and some friends thought what better way to learn about what conservation is really all about, other than getting our hands dirty and volunteering.

The job we volunteered for was quite an education in how the few remaining Heathland habitats were maintained. Cutting and chopping a small group of us cleared overgrown plants and weeds which would eventually overgrow the Heather and destroy the Heathlands Habitat.

Hounslow Heath was the target for the BTCV groups work on my week of volunteering, it is one of the few London Heaths to remain today and without maintaining would eventually evolve into a different kind of habitat, leaving a number of species without a home.

The experience has shown me that taking the surrounding landscape that we live in for granted will eventually lead to its destruction and all it takes to maintain is a little hard work.