Scandinavian inspired garden ideas - Jane Foster

Scandinavian inspired garden ideas  - Jane Foster

We moved into our current home 16 months ago and decided we'd like to give it a Scandi feel. It's a quirky 60s house full of light, which is why it appealed to us. The whole house needs work but as we're in no hurry, we're happy to do it ourselves over the next few years.
The garden was a complete blank canvas - literally a rectangle of flat lawn. Our initial focus was to build a studio in the garden and we chose to build it from insulated panels (SIPS) and then clad it in larch. We wanted it to look Scandinavian in feel - here are some snap shots - my partner Jim built it from scratch. He hired a digger and the created a few grassy banks using earth he dug out from the ground. We planted a few silver birch trees and have built a deck on several levels for various seating areas. Our seven year old daughter loves playing on these areas and makes den with cushions and rugs on them in the summer.

Now that the studio has been built, we're thinking of garden inspiration and I've found a really cool link to great garden ideas on a site called homify. The site is full of inspiration to suite a range of tastes but I've focused on a few here that have a particularly Scandi feel and that I might be able to pinch some ideas from.

This garden below is a project in Holland by WWOO Dutch Design. What I love is the use of concrete fencing to create an outside room. The tree provides shading and a wonderful dappled light, creating a much cosier space that if it wasn't there. I really like the timber table and bench seat - really  great clean lines and shape.We've struggled to find tasteful garden seating. I also love the fact that this is an outside kitchen with what looks like an oven!

This garden is a project by Ansicht Zuang and can be seen here.  I love the wild grass (we let the grass on our bank grow wild like this in the summer - Polly loves playing in it) large silver birch and path. This path has inspired me to create a curved version in our garden using pebbles and timber, instead of concrete. I'm a huge fan of gardens that aren't too fussy - I don't like flowers beds that look great parts of the year but the rest of the time look redundant and scruffy. I prefer grasses that look good all the year round.

What a clever planting idea! I particularly love the black board painted wall so you can add labels to the herbs in chalk. We've got a black board wall in the kitchen but it's never occurred to me to paint one in the garden! My daughter would love this and she could also go and fetch the various herbs when I choose them for cooking!  This project can be found here.

Here's a garden studio with a planted roof! The project is called small green roofs and can be seen here. Something we've been considering for a while now - perhaps with sedum. Not only would it be great for attracting wildlife, it would soften the look of the studio roof.

I shall post some more photos of our garden space once we've made a few more changes - will wait until the Spring when I feel like gardening again!