Look around any housing development and, more often than not, the external spaces seem to comprise of forgotten bits of land. But things may be changing. Increasingly, developers are not only demanding imaginative show home gardens, but are also offering purchasers the opportunity to have their garden redesigned. Chris Young asked three people associated with housing to give their view.
Designer: Joe Swift, co-founder and design director at Modular Garden, London
Comment: It is well known that a new house buyer is lucky if they get a bit of turf and a new fence as their so called “garden”. They are left, rather daunted, to deal with it themselves. To be competitive housebuilders will offer a huge range of upgrades such as kitchens, bathrooms, white goods and carpets, but rarely attempt to deal with the garden.
Why? The main reason is that national house building is a touchy, no-nonsense, extremely competitive, closely regulated business, and over the next few years it is only going to get tougher. The upgrades offered are generally
recognised brands that have a known value to both the buyer and the seller. Suppliers of these products work closely with the housebuilder with regards to payment, delivery and after sales service, and there can be no chance of the upgrades delaying the sales process.
Historically, trying to fit bespoke garden design and build into this kind of high pressured business was simply too much hassle. In addition, the approach to garden design, along with the designers and landscape contractors themselves, is not perceived as being capable of delivering a consistently high quality product at sufficient volumes for national housebuilders. Larger building sites go hand-in-hand with the appropriate certification, insurance, health and safety documentation, sub contractor’s agreements and so on – and housebuilders need to be guaranteed that those inevitable snagging problems, which are inherent with garden building, won’t keep coming back to haunt them. They like to sell, get out and stay out.
To make a significant difference in
this field, the introduction of a new and consistent level of quality product is key. At Modular Garden (MG) we have analysed all of these factors, and have worked closely with housebuilders to create a solution that enables the garden to be presented and purchased though their complex selling process. In the fast, high-pressured selling environment, we enable the clients to make meaningful decisions with confidence on a large ticket item. “Form”, MG’s design and build process, is an accessibly priced product and is easy for housebuilders to sell. We work with all national housebuilders, thereby offering more than just a localised solution. As a consequence, it’s important to be a recognised brand, which is complementary to their product.
This whole issue has much wider implications. Just how long can the large-scale, mass monocultural approach to house building go on without the garden becoming a key issue to the environment? All the interior specifications are regulated from an environmental perspective, but it seems that, somewhere along the line, it is the gardens that have been forgotten.
