Scotney Castle

Scotney Castle & Gardens:

Set in the Kent Weald countryside next to the village of Lamberhurst is Scotney Castle and it's gardens run by the National Trust. Situated on the top of a hill is Scotney Mansion a private Victorian property, which has some rooms open through the year. Next to the mansion is an old quarry that has been transformed into a secluded garden. Further down into the valley is a ruined 14th century castle set on an island in the middle of a lake. Within the lake are a further two islands with an old boat house and a Henry Moore sculpture and framing the lake/moat is the River Teise that flows through to Lamberhurst village. As well as the castle, mansion and gardens is the estate itself that has woodland, flocks of sheep, a farm and the only national trust protected hop farm in the country.

Focus Week 4:

Focus Week 4:

Over the previous week i have been making a mahoosive site model for our project in Lowestoft once again with Spencer :-) In conjunction with this i thought that my fourth focus week would be a good opportunity to research landscape architecture practice projects and works within the London and South East area of the country via the Landscape Institute practice directory. Looking in particular at any projects that use model making as a way of demonstrating proposals, as well as other medias that exclude illustrator and CAD drawings.

Practices of note A to D:

Breeze is a fairly new company established in 2004 in North London with a nice refreshing page that reflects the practice's name and even includes some poetry! Projects such as Bonn Square (shown below) and Wigan Pier Quarter use models in both projects. Trees are created using aluminium wire with plain white backgrounds and any key feature is emphasised using colour.

Burns + Nice specialises in urban design, environmental design and transport planning. Based in inner London the majority of it's porojects are based with the city ranging from small squares to masterplanning of a neighbourhood. The image below is of Campsbourne Neighbourhood in the borough of Haringey, where the practice were asked to address the issues of the area in conjuction with the local residents and this model gives a clear idea of the layout of the area and where planting may be implemented (I do like the trees).

Coe Design uses various forms of media to portray it's deign ideas including coloured pencil, montages, ink sketches, illustrator and cad work. I like the colours used in this image as part of the design for Jodrell Bank Telescope Visitor Centre and it demonstrates a fun and playful idea. Coe design have done projects in UK and Europe, the Middle East and S.E. Asia and i like the variation in skills shown by the various media :-)


Colvin & Moggridge are a long established practice specialising in historic parks and gardens, leisure, recreation and urban design. What i like about this company is that nearly all their projects incorporate visualisations that are created using watercolours, which makes a change from the illustrator works that most companies use. The watercolour below is from a project for the Royal Albert Hall where a roof garden was created on the south steps.