Ivor Kilby Gardens

IKG's raison d'être. An ongoing partnership between client and IKG. A cornerstone of the business. A sketchpad for new ideas, playing with what makes spaces feel as they do, working with planting, contour and feel to make evolving vignettes.  Self seeding steers the garden to ever-changing vignettes, challenging the norm and creating beautiful moments. 

Every new project is discussed here (our client is, and has always been, an indispensable consultant to IKG), continually allowing ideas to be adjusted and developed. Helping to hone planting, layouts and technicalities.

Magic.

Surrounding an Old Rectory, a Plantsman's Garden. Vegetable and Rose Parterres, Double Long borders, woodland planting and walled borders anchor a Georgian-fronted Rectory to its landscape in South Herefordshire. The recently-altered approach to the front door is set against far-reaching views to gentle, mixed farmland. Roses, Lavender and Valerian provide quiet harmony between the house, garden and landscape. 

A village garden, with generous planting for year-round beauty. Masses of flower and volume: dependable from the first snowdrops to Christmas- flowering chrysanthemum and miscanthus against low winter sun. Roses, catmint and knautia lead into dahlia, asters and Helenium. Lawn areas, edged with steel fabricated on-site and dense planting help to ease the ongoing husbandry of the garden.

A family garden, centred around a newly-reworked terrace provides everyday beauty and joyous space for entertaining. Rich, permanent is complemented with generous container displays which evolve with the seasons. A secluded Rose Parterre provides summer exuberance- heady and enveloping for the most delightful morning cup of coffee! 

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Soft, relaxed planting. Thoughtfully- placed trees provide an evolving veil to the house, augmented with easy shrub, perennial and bulb layers to mark and celebrate the seasons.

Newly planted West London Garden.

Working mostly existing hardscape, altered and added to so that it works for everyday family life- entertaining and play. Mixed planting obscures boundaries and sightlines. Central lawn, wall-trained roses, softened edges. Scent, flower and texture. 

An Old Dairy, reimagined. Planting integrates with the pared-back vernacular and quietly-renovated interior of this Old Dairy in West Wales. Stable yard bricks lightly direct to the entrance, through a pattern of planting reminiscent of any gentle half-surfaced farmyard. Nothing too obvious, nor plentiful. All of the herbs that should be within reach of a farmyard door with added interest to pick up the intentional re-imagining of the building. Shrubby Helichrysum provides valuable winter comfort and lightness whilst relating the ingredients of traditional cattle fodder.  Prunus subhirtella autumnalis worked against the building to provide pinpricks of flower across a window, with dots of Helleborus, wallflower and sprawling mint.