John’s Thoughts from the Buckingham Palace Garden Party

I recently had the pleasure of being invited one of the Queen’s annual summer garden parties at Buckingham Palace.

Naturally, I couldn’t keep my mind off architecture, and couldn’t help notice that the gardens were designed to solve the same problems that our clients face – albeit on a much, much larger scale.

When designing a garden, two of our client’s biggest concerns are visual and acoustic privacy. After all, there’s no point designing your perfect garden if it’s ruined by prying eyes and roaring traffic.

Luckily, the best solution to the privacy problem is a natural one: trees. Trees not only shield you from view, they also naturally muffle noise, while replacing it with the much more pleasant sound of wind rustling through leaves.

Despite the nearby tower blocks and endless traffic of Hyde Park Corner, the gardens feel totally separate from the chaos of the city thanks to the wall of trees that surrounds them.

There’s no way the original designer of the garden, renowned landscape architect Capability Brown, could have known just how effectively his garden would fare in the modern city, but it’s the perfect spot to enjoy a cup of tea in peace!

John Dyer-Grimes