Gravel Garden

On this recently built plot, the challenge was to dress a still-bare exterior without losing the house’s contemporary architectural line. Our approach: a dry, mineral, resolutely Mediterranean garden, where every plant carries twice the weight.

A path of raw timber planks, laid directly onto pale gravel, winds beneath a rough-timber pergola toward the table and its chairs, where meals know how to become moments shared. An old olive tree, preserved and showcased at the centre of the space, anchors the garden and gives it presence from day one, without waiting for the rest of the planting to fill in.

Column-shaped cypress, grasses and Mediterranean shrubs punctuate the gravel in careful touches, mixing bright blooms and green tones for a garden that lives all year round. Lizards have already made it home — a telling sign — and this still-young garden is, season by season, growing into its full, mature form.