Surrey Homes | SH29 | March 2017 | Fashion supplement inside

This page: Nicola’s eye for detail and her clever use of up-cycled
salvage and retro items has come into its own on this project
from Nicola, and the use of a restricted palette is an example
of another good one. With white as the base, any colour
combination could work, but there’s something about the
light by the coast that brings depth to greens, greys and blues
– perhaps it’s an instinct to respond to these colours when
there’s such an expanse of sea and sky outside. Whatever it is,
it creates an uplifting and calm space and works very well.
It is tricky to make a garden so close to the beach, as
wind, salt and sand are the enemy of many plants, so Nicola
has taken a leaf out of a famous local garden’s book – that
of Derek Jarman’s further down the coast at Dungeness
– and created a sculptural look for the front garden using
pieces of driftwood and more salvage. The back garden is
another story – in fact it’s a story that links the past with
the name of Nicola’s house and explains the intricate and
imaginative mural on the wall running along the boundary
of the garden. “Originally the plot had contained just one
house, called Shell House,” she says, “because the owner,
a man called Edwin Sutton, had decorated the outside of
his house and the end wall all over with images made from
shells. The original house was knocked down in the 1970s
to allow for two houses to be built on the plot, and this
house was renamed ‘My Way’. All that was left were the shell
designs on the garden wall.” Nicola changed the name
85 wealdentimes.co.uk