Straight to the Curve

Doug Holloway’s Blog & Films - Life, all things Landscape & other stuff...

Planting Design Ideas that go further than looking good – Doug Holloway Landscape Design

Aside from creating something that is ‘beautiful’ to look at and fore fills the brief and pleases the client. What else can we hope to achieve when we do planting? 1. Small Scale and Large scale considered. We hope that the planting works in the Macro and the Micro. What does that mean? It means we hope the planting works and feels successful and is interesting and stimulating, whether we see it from a distance as

Glimpses Calling. We see a glimpse of a landscape and instantaneously there is a story in our mind eye. How magical....

STORIES – Landscapes tell a story. We can create stories when we design?

Landscape Design can create a story of a place. It can retell an old story and also it can reimagine that story for the new design… How can we interpret landscape design through art of story telling? When I started creative writing for fun as a hobby my mind went to stories. I started thinking about stories in the landscape and as I read more about landscape design, and read what designer thought I saw

Gardens are feeling spaces and they are best created through feeling.

Landscape design is a difficult process to describe (in my opinion). It is for me the ability to focus on a felt sense of the site and the felt sense of the people I imagine for, while I create and draw. It’s a joy to do what I do, to create something that is so abstract and ephemeral even esoteric, having vague meaning only to me or to you (universal). I have understood from the

03 Country Estate Toot Baldon Oxfordshire

Large Tree Planting. What is a good size to choose for plants and trees in a new garden?

I normally recommend to my clients that we plant trees, shrubs and perennials in a hierarchy of sizes. That means with slower growing items such as trees and shrubs, its best to plant them at least a certain size so we can enjoy the garden the way it is meant to be as soon as it is finished. If the plant needs to be pruned specifically or a particular shape developed, this is another time

02 Circular Garden Long Crendon Oxfordshire

Curves in Crendon – How can sinuous curves in Garden Design help to deal with level differences on a site?

I wanted to talk a little about complex construction and layers in this blog. This was a garden I designed in Long Crendon in Buckinghamshire. My clients wanted elegant curves, a seating space, fine lawn and flower beds. Robert is a well established engineer and I could see that he wanted a neat, refined design, that was (obviously) well engineered. The site had a lot of level differences between 50cm and 1.4 metres. I came

Alive with Wildflowers – How do we create Wildflower Meadows and Why should we?

Why should we plant Wildflower Meadows? I believe in very attractive well kept, ornamental gardens, but I also believe in wild spaces. If we have enough ground in a garden I believe in creating some wild space. There are several reasons for this, firstly because of the environment, but also because Wildflower meadows create fantastic mood in your garden. This wildness that can be juxtaposed with mown paths. A sense of getting away in a

Wild Flowers Meadows Cient Enjoys Cup Of Tea Bladen Oxfordshire

Creating a Natural Pond and Wildflower Meadow in Bladon, Woodstock, Oxfordshire – Part 02: The Garden Develops

In the first year as seen in the previous Part of the blog, we can see the meadow is just establishing and can look quite disappointing, it takes faith and commitment to develop a meadow, but now we can see the wild meadow in full bloom in the second full season!

Wild Pond and Flower Meadow Bladon, nr Woodstock – Part 01: Design

Wild Pond Design The photo shows the pond and meadow in the first growing season, the meadow is still germinating and developing… I will add further photos this next season 2018 as it matures. The Site & Brief I was asked to work in the upper area of this long, thin and sloping garden in Bladon. The site had fantastic views across the fields, various wildlife, and also many mature trees that added a lot

Wildlife Pond and Sculpture in Summertown

This picture shows a wildlife pond in summertown, with a sculpture behind supposed to reflect in the water and open up a dark space in the corner of the garden.

Doug Holloway is a landscape architect, and writer. He lives in Oxfordshire with this Wife and Daughter. In his spare time he enjoys, film, food, walking in nature & surfing. In recent years, having met his Wife, who is of Turkish origin, he has also enjoyed Turkish culture, including food, noticeable in his expanded waistline, swimming in the silky Mediterranean of Bodrum, and exploring the wild, arid landscapes of the region… when it is not too hot.