Kate Brown
Kate designs elegant and functional spaces, that are sustainable, promote wellbeing and are a natural extension of your home.
Her aim is to create a garden that will perfectly suit your needs, by working closely with you, to truly understand your wishes and requirements, allowing her to produce a garden that is personal to you and in keeping with the surrounding environment.
Kate has a strong focus on spatial composition, which will ensure you have a practical space. The design details will be thoughtful and considered, providing a relaxing and cohesive scheme, with a juxtaposition of the plant forms and textures against the hard landscaping, creating year round interest with a changing palette.
Kate is happy to offer a full or part garden design service, as well as ad-hoc design consultancy, whether this is for a busy family garden with multiple uses, an outside entertaining area, or a private and quiet oasis. If you would like to work with her, or know more, please get in touch via kate@katebrownstudio.co.uk.
Biography:
Kate recently graduated from the London College of Garden Design completing her Garden Design Diploma with a Distinction.
Prior to this, Kate worked as a Chartered Surveyor in Asset Management for a large Financial Services firm in the City. In this role she developed the strong problem-solving and project management skills required to overcome the obstacles managing large multi-disciplinary teams. In her past role, attention to detail was critical, along with working to a budget and a tight timeline. After 12 successful years in the city, Kate made the exciting decision to undertake the advanced training that would turn her passion for helping friends and family create elegant and functional spaces from a hobby into a full-time career.
Instagram: @katebrownstudio
The entrance grounds of Camden Place have been transformed into elaborate and grand gardens, befitting a Grade II* listed manor house. New spaces, journeys and vistas have been created, to meet the requirements of golf members, social members, private residents and events visitors.
Design inspiration has been taken from the French Imperial Family, who lived here, in exile in the 1870s. Strong lines from the hard landscaping have been used to provide clear direction of movement around the site, providing increased flexibility for the different users. This is softened by the contrasting position of the undulating formal hedgerows and lines of multi-stemmed trees, along the with soft curves of the planting borders. This is a modern, forward-looking design, that maintains a strong connection with the past.
This garden was designed with socialising and entertainment at its heart, whilst maintaining a connection to the neighbouring Chesham Bois woodland. The garden was designed into a series of connected rooms, based on the mid-century architecture of the house.
A new journey and atmosphere have been created within the garden. There is a softer, more welcoming and private front garden. Then from the back of the house, through the floor to ceiling windows there is a view of multi-stem trees and deep raised planters in close proximity to the house, creating a seasonally changing picture of the garden. Stepping down through these planters takes you into a large outdoor dining space, with a built in kitchen and island. From here you descend onto the Bocce pitch for after dinner games, and from there you reach the sunken seating area, with built-in fireplace and a cantilevered pergola, draped in scented climbers. All of these areas offer a view of Chesham Bois to the North, where the boundary has been planted as a woodland edge, blurring the lines between the garden and the woodland beyond.
A generous family garden that offers three different areas; a ‘public’ space for friends and family to be entertained with a large dining area and outdoor kitchen, ‘family’ space for the immediate family to come together, with more intermit seating and a lawn for games of badminton, and ‘private’ spaces, which offer quiet, wilder, personal retreats within the garden. Each of these different areas have their own unique atmosphere, whilst still forming part of a cohesive and connected design.
Soft and organic forms have been used to create a unique events space around Cambridge Cottage, that is an extension of the essence of Kew Gardens. A new entrance onto Kew Green and two separate entrances have been created into Kew Gardens to provide flexible and adaptable space and the site has been designed to be fully accessible throughout.
A generous area in the centre provides a space large enough for 120 people to gather, surrounded by a variety of beautiful and statuesque trees, with soft and colourful perennial planting below. Three large reflective pools of water gather at the bottom of this space and at the corner of Cambridge Cottage, providing ever changing views of the house, trees and sky, offering magical photo opportunities and fantastic scenes for guests. There are smaller openings for gatherings within the garden, along with more private pockets of space, which offer a quieter more tranquil resting point. Privacy and screening is provided by a variety of trees, tall perennials and grasses.
