We all love being in the great outdoors, but let's be honest -
most of us don't have a back garden
that looks anything like this.
We all have some idea what our homes should look like,
but when it comes to our gardens, we are clueless.
Well, all that is about to change.
Oh! Oh!
In this series we help homeowners
transform their outside spaces.
Our secret garden is where the magic happens,
home to a team of extraordinary designers...
Let's take a look.
..able to turn unused plots
into pockets of paradise...
Oh, wow! Oh, wow!
..or life-changing wonderlands.
Oh, my God! Thank you!
..whatever the size or budget...
..using the latest technologies
to showcase radically different solutions...
Oh, that's beautiful. It's lovely at night. Yeah.
..before the winning design
is enjoyed in real life.
It's a dream come true.
Absolutely stunning.
Tonight...
I'm so excited.
I've waited over 20 years for this.
..Pam and Marcus have £60,000
to reimagine their urban garden.
I'd really like to take you on an adventure.
Yes. Yes, please.
Oh, deep breaths.
Let's go.
Oh! Oh, my goodness.
I am absolutely speechless.
This feels like I'm at the Chelsea Flower Show.
Wahey! But which design will they choose?
Wow!
Look at this place!
As you can see, the floor is very dangerous.
And for £8,000, Ahmed and Rehab's derelict secret...
Our three-and-a-half-year-old
daughter doesn't even know that we have a garden.
..needs a complete overhaul.
Can our designer...
Shall we see what I've come up with? Yes, please.
..find the answer?
Wow!
Oh, wow! I love it.
This is Your Garden Made Perfect.
Arriving for our big budget transformation today
are florist Pam and her husband, financial adviser Marcus,
from St Albans, Hertfordshire.
They want to turn their huge plot
into an oasis for wildlife,
but they have no idea how to.
Hi, Angela! Hello!
I like that you've gone with the garden theme, Pam!
Likewise! Yeah.
Are you all set? Yes. I think so.
Yeah. Very excited, can't wait.
Shall we head off? Yeah.
Fantastic. Come on!
Right, two minutes.
Pam and Marcus live with their grown-up son, daughter
and her other half.
Can you sit up a bit? Because you look short. Oh...
That's better.
Their giant plot has evolved with the family over two decades.
The garden has been used, basically, for children.
And now, effectively, they've grown up,
we can actually make it into something that WE want.
I want it to be beautiful,
I want it to be a wildlife haven,
but actually, it's a mess.
This long strip of land has become
a disjointed scrubland,
interspersed with random, quirky features.
It's not functional,
it's not relaxing.
We've got that big tree there and nothing grows underneath it.
There's no shade,
so you can't sit out in the summer.
For years, we didn't have anyone here
because of the state of the garden.
Look at it.
And Pam's least favourite spot
is Marcus's pride and joy.
Marcus has got some disgustingly ugly sheds.
Used daily for storage and exercise,
the rest of the garden has become a highway to get to them.
This part of the garden is what I've dubbed "no-man's land".
It's not pretty.
It's just a waste.
We don't know what to do with it, basically.
After 22 years of being frustrated with the space,
the time has finally come
to seek some professional help.
I don't feel that I've fulfilled its potential.
We couldn't achieve it on our own, could we? No.
Life's too short.
It's something that I really want to do
before I'm too old to enjoy it.
Pam and Marcus are hoping the landscaping geniuses at Garden HQ
can unearth their plot's potential.
I'm so excited,
I've waited over 20 years for this.
Why have you waited so long? Because I do think people...
"She's a florist, they're creative.
"The house is done..." Good question. "..they're ready to go.
"What's the delay?" Children.
They'll be gone soon. OK.
The garden's been, you know, a children's garden. Yeah.
Big trampolines, football goals, everything. OK.
And now they're older, it's Pam's time.
Aw!
So, what do you want?
In your close-your-eyes, dream case scenario, what is it?
Nature,
wild flowers,
somewhere lovely and relaxing to sit.
Serene. Absolutely.
You want to feel calm. I do.
What is the budget?
60,000. OK, wow!
So it's obviously very important.
Yes. It's an extension of the house,
and the garden certainly doesn't fit
the style of the house now.
60,000 sounds a lot,
but actually it's a big garden
and we want it to last us the rest of our lives. Mm-hm.
With Pam and Marcus waiting so long for their dream space,
there are high hopes for the transformation.
And the two garden designers
in competition to win the commission this week
are both Chelsea Flower Show medal winners -
Tom Massey versus Helen Elks-Smith.
Shut your eyes, rotate.
A bit more, a bit more. Stop, stop, stop, stop.
OK, guess the herb.
Rosemary.
Got it right. Yeah. Nailed it.
Helen uses science
to unlock the natural world...
I have a great job.
My maths-geeky brain likes geometry and shape and form,
and spatial design, very connected.
..while Tom's known for his unconventional designs.
I relish that challenge to give clients something that's
going to open their eyes and push them to think about something
that they might not have thought about before.
Both Helen and Tom have arrived in St Albans
to work out how to redesign this colossal
300-square metre plot.
With a garden this size, the view from inside is all-important,
and Helen has noticed a huge problem with the outlook.
So here we've got this kind of beautiful big picture windows,
and a picture window is exactly that.
It needs a picture.
And yet here, the composition of what we're looking at
is not a beautiful picture. So from here, we've really got to
look at, what's the interesting composition?
Do we want the focal point to be the shed?
No, we don't, because it's not beautiful enough.
Trees in a garden attract wildlife,
but this towering 13-metre conifer
is sucking the light and life out of this space.
You can actually get an ASBO for planting a fast-growing
coniferous tree that's just going to block out all of your neighbours'
light. It's a huge tree. Nothing can survive underneath it.
It's not giving any sort of character
or any sort of atmosphere to the space.
Both designers have clocked the double shed situation,
currently the only place this corridor garden is leading to.
We're looking at quite nice buildings, but they're not
great buildings. So we've got to improve the aesthetics of this.
Where do we provide the screening?
Where do we create the greenery?
Where do we sit?
This house was built in 1936
and a jumble of tumbledown relics
from previous owners litter the space.
There's a fireplace actually hidden behind here,
maybe that could be reinstated into this wall
and you have this outdoor fireplace.
Playing with things that are kind of ruined,
restoring them in some way or kind of using them as a feature,
can be quite interesting.
And it's become clear the real challenge in this garden
is the dead space in the middle.
It's a huge space that's just acting as this kind of
thoroughfare through the garden, really,
with nothing really to hold any interest, to make you pause.
This is a very long, narrow space.
It's a big, long runway.
And so what this is doing is it's just pushing me in this direction,
so I don't want to come and stop here -
and this is all the lovely bit!
Both designers have grasped the problems with the plot.
Now they need to know what Pam and Marcus want to do with it.
So I can see, throughout the space,
there's little areas of wild flower meadows
and there's lots of kind of plants dotted around.
Is plants something you're passionate about?
Yes, I absolutely love all plants,
particularly wild flowers.
It would be quite nice to have some water.
So is that plunge,
bubble,
spurt?
Yes...
..is the answer to that.
I love the noise, love the energy.
Yeah. Birds, wildlife, all of it.
How would you use that back area?
I call it the industrial area.
They're not unattractive buildings.
I'm glad you said that because we disagree on this.
OK. I think they're a thing of beauty.
Yeah.
My wife doesn't agree. Yeah.
I think they look fine.
Do we want to look at them all the time? No. No.
Pam and Marcus have got an impressive budget
but this garden is massive,
so will that be enough to tackle all the issues
and create something truly spectacular for Pam?
I've got a much better idea of the kind of garden that I need to create
so that it really hits home for them.
And, of course, that's always a challenge.
Pam loves wild flowers.
Marcus, you know, he loves the industrial area, he calls it.
So I think combining those two, it's going to be really difficult.
But no job is too big for our talented team.
Two virtual gardens are about to be presented to Pam and Marcus.
Only one can win the commission.
I want to get the inside info on their competing designs.
I like the double Navy situation,
almost as if you're on the same team.
Except you're not.
LAUGHTER
Do we want to win?
Yeah, of course we want to win because we are competitive.
How difficult, though, was this particular one?
This garden is just so underutilised.
You walk in, you see it all immediately.
There's no sense of discovery.
You've got this big picture window, no picture.
For me, that was kind of a key thing.
60k - that, to me, feels like a really exciting budget for this.
This garden is big, you know,
it's around 300 metres squared. Yeah.
And it's difficult to kind of explain to people that gardens
do cost a lot of money.
There's some complicated issues in that garden.
You know, there is the clearance.
Whatever you do with that, it eats into your budget,
because when you go to a stone supplier and it says,
"Oh, it's £30 a square metre," and you think, "Oh, OK."
What you forget, of course, is that to get to that point,
what does that paving get laid on?
You know, you're going to be looking at £150 a square metre to lay that.
For things that are not... Seen.
Yeah, it's like the foundations...
Absolutely. ..of a house.
But that stuff is the stuff that massively matters.
It's like the knickers. Yeah.
It's like a really good pair of pants!
With a whopping 60-grand refurb up for grabs,
these pants need to be the perfect fit!
What is it you're looking for, do you think?
Something different from just a patio, a bit of lawn and a shed.
Pam and Marcus are about to see two
drastically different futures for their garden.
Only one will become a reality.
OK, guys, are you ready?
Fabulous. There you go.
Thanks, Tom.
Tom's first to present his design...
..whilst Helen watches with me in the glasshouse,
seeing her rival's solution
for the very first time.
What's Tom's shtick now in the biz?
Original designers question things.
Stir things up bit.
Yeah, just go with the "what if".
That's a good thing. What if?
Are you ready to see what I've done with your garden? Yeah. I'm so excited. I can't wait to show you.
Come on, Tom. Let's have a look. Let's have a look.
It's our garden.
Wow!
It is such a mess!
CHUCKLING
The first thing I'm looking at is Marcus's disgustingly ugly sheds.
And the tree...
It's got to go, in my opinion.
Well, what I've really tried to do is give you both a garden
that performs for both of you.
So I'd really like to set you on an adventure and show you
how I've transformed your space.
Fantastic. Oh, deep breaths.
She's proper nervous, isn't she? She is.
Here you go.
PAM GASPS
Oh! Look!
Oh!
Oh, my goodness! Wow!
That's incredible.
Oh, wow!
Oh, it's just fabulous. Yeah.
Blown away. Yeah.
I am absolutely speechless.
Just incredible. Looks like a park.
They're just taking it all in, aren't they?
Tom has utterly reinvented
this unimaginative strip of garden.
Oh!
PAM GASPS
Oh, my goodness!
He's created a wild oasis
of rocky paths, waterways
and untamed meadows.
I hope you can see that we've lost the big tree, but we've brought
loads of new life into the garden with multi-stem trees,
with blossom, with fruit.
That going just opens up the whole garden. Yeah.
But Tom hasn't just got rid of the tree,
he's ingeniously reused it
to create bespoke furniture,
and it's peppered throughout the space.
I mean, it's a really good thing
to do, to take something that's there
that's going to be expensive for you to take out... Yeah.
..and to use that in a different way.
I think it's a really good idea!
Let's go and have a look what's in the rest of the garden. OK. Great.
Tom's taking them to the centre of their old lawn
where Pam's request for a water feature...
Oh, I'm lost for words,
it's fantastic!
..has been more than met.
I can't believe it!
Ooh!
OK, so a little bridge. Yeah, that's fun.
This small lake has its very own oak walkway
and a stepping-stone path.
That is amazing.
I've given you all these little paths, all these avenues to walk
through the garden.
It's all about adventure and discovery and excitement.
It just doesn't look like a back garden.
It looks like you're out walking somewhere.
Yeah.
And just like his reinvention of Pam's tree,
Tom has retained and revamped that old wall.
Oh, my gosh!
Ha! The old fireplace.
So you've got a little area where you could sit and light a
little fire, have a cup of coffee, read a book. Love it.
Wouldn't that be a great garden to grow up in? Amazing.
Like, if you were kind of, like,
you know, Swallows and Amazons, and all of that.
I mean, they're both a really playful couple as well. Yeah.
So this kind of taps into that.
And there's one final surprise for Marcus
at the top of the garden.
Wow! Oh! That's brilliant!
Tom has kept his beloved sheds
and reimagined the space as a rustic play zone.
Fantastic. Looks great.
This area here is kind of much more usable now.
You can fix your bikes, and you've got a fire pit.
This is like your kind of woodland camp, in a way.
Fantastic, this would be the best bit of the garden.
He's licking his lips!
So it gives you a space that's hidden away at the back.
The garden now performs for both of you in loads of different ways.
Absolutely. It's fantastic, thank you. Quite agree.
Tom's done a great job because he's paid so much attention
to their brief, all the things that they like, you know,
all Pam's passions.
And, actually, Marcus really cares about it.
He does. His sheds do matter.
Yeah. But, actually, his family matters. Yeah.
And so space for him to spend with his family
is so important. Mm.
By catering for both Pam and Marcus's wildest garden fantasies,
Tom's created a naturalistic woodland,
combining wildlife and adventure
to create the ultimate garden retreat.
We've been here for well over 20 years,
we've never managed to get it how we want it,
and now every part of it is usable.
It just feels like I'm at the
Chelsea Flower Show, it's unbelievable.
Thank you. Pleasure.
I'm shaking, I just can't believe it. You're in there already.
I'm in there, I'm in there, dangling my feet. Oh...
OK, brace yourselves.
There's another one.
I know. Oh, my goodness. I'm so excited.
Over in Sussex, Tom's taken me to a magnificent garden
that draws on the same naturalistic techniques
he's used for Pam and Marcus.
The Sussex Prairie Garden
allows nature to run riot
in manicured ways.
Looking across it,
you get this kind of tapestry effect.
It's so beautiful.
This garden is a grander version of Tom's design.
Here, eight acres of meandering borders
are planted in the same naturalistic style.
This style of planting is called new perennial planting.
New perennial planting?
So, a perennial is a plant that comes back year on year.
They're kind of grouped in bigger groups,
so you get the impact of the red with this Persicaria.
Yeah. Or, you know, the grass is growing together.
You get the movement and the sway... OK.
..and the kind of mass effect.
The free-flowing perennials create a magical space to explore.
I love that kind of sense of discovery through these.
Yeah. But even if you haven't got a massive plot,
ornamental grasses can create an incredible
tactile environment in any space.
I absolutely love this stuff.
It's so whimsical and gorgeous.
Foxtail barley, it's a really nice ornamental grass.
What I really like about this area here,
it's a much more intermingled kind of planting.
You've got the aster, the barley,
you've got other things growing up through it.
I love it, and this is what Pam Marcus's will feel? Yeah.
The advantages of having a meadow is that you've got
all these different types of plants growing together,
supporting such a huge range of wildlife.
The open daisy-like flowers here
are a favourite for pollinators,
the easy access making them irresistible.
And it creates habitats for things like field mice.
It creates food for pollinators.
I think a lot of people would be like, "Whoa, back it up a bit now,
"I don't want any mice in my garden."
I think, though, why not? A field mouse is not going to come
into your home and eat your cheese. Fine.
Tom has designed a slice of woodland for Pam and Marcus,
but in their back garden.
And what better way to relax in the woods
than to build a fire?
It's pretty rustic.
Will we light a fire?
Let's light a fire. OK. Let's grab some logs.
I feel so masculine right now!
Pumped!
In Tom's design, he's given them two fire features
to gather around.
The fireplace in the central nook,
and the rustic zone fire pit.
If it was evening and you have the stars above,
you had a few beers or, you know, a hot chocolate, some marshmallows.
There's just nothing, really, that beats that.
And to get another half a day out of your garden. Exactly.
Back at our design hub,
Tom is hoping his bold woodland scheme
will win Pam and Marcus's big-budget transformation.
I think they really appreciated everything that I'd given them.
I would love them to pick mine.
But there are two in this competition,
and it's Helen's turn
to present her vision,
while Tom settles with me
to see his opponent in action.
She's the top dog, isn't she?
What I really like about her designs are the detail.
You know, she's full of details.
So, shall we have a look and see what else we come up with?
Great. Thank you. Let's go. Let's go.
Back in your garden again. Oh, my gosh!
Table tennis. It is. Yeah.
For me, one of the big problems for this garden
is we've had the extension done.
Beautiful big picture window. No picture.
Yeah.
So let's see what I did with it.
Yeah. Yes, please. Let's go.
PAM GASPS
Oh, my word!
Oh! Oh, blimey!
Oh... Oh, my gosh!
Oh, wow!
Oh!
Gosh.
Oh, I can see a massive water feature there.
Absolutely... That's just beautiful.
Oh, my gosh,
that is absolutely amazing.
Helen's design tackles this garden
in a completely different way to Tom.
Rather than creating a playful journey,
she has broken up the garden into elegant seating areas
interspersed with pockets of vibrant nature.
One of the key bits of this design is,
by dividing your garden
up into these discrete spaces,
it enables you to use that space.
But the thing that strikes me here immediately is the colour.
The flowers on the patio.
That's just... It is spectacular.
I think the inspiration is this formal-versus-natural,
and the kind of tension between the two,
because what is a garden apart from a tamed wild space?
Pruning things back. Look at it and go, "Oh!"
Helen has boldly replaced their original patio seating
with a sleek pond
and given the picture window the view it deserves.
By having the pond placed right outside, the wildlife is also
going to come right down. And one of the things that's really
important when you've got water in a garden is just making sure that
animals can get in, but they can get out. So it's placing the rocks
and the stones in the right places. That's absolutely amazing.
It's just what we asked for, isn't it? Yeah.
Can frogs not swim?
They can, but if there's no way for them to get out,
they'll eventually drown, because they're amphibians,
they need to have oxygen. Oh, yeah, OK.
Helen has taken Pam and Marcus
to the middle of their old, lacklustre lawn.
Oh, my gosh!
Oh, it's just amazing!
Like Tom, Helen has repurposed
the towering conifer,
but she's used it to make log stacks and bughouses,
which are ingeniously positioned to create the optical illusion
of a grander garden.
When you look at them, when you're going up or down the garden,
what they do is they just pull your eye to the side.
And so, instead of it feeling long and narrow,
it widens the whole space.
It really does work, actually.
It looks wider.
Yeah. It's incredible.
Helen's removed the old, ruined wall,
creating a sophisticated social zone,
surrounded with multi-stemmed trees for dappled shade
throughout the day.
Oh! Oh, wow!
You can see this little light is going to move through the space.
Oh! Yeah, lovely. Oh, gosh.
I can't believe I could be sitting here and seeing that happen.
I think I'd be here all day, every day.
And this is an area we've never, ever used.
It's always been a place to walk through to get somewhere else.
At the back of the garden
there's just one issue left for Helen to resolve.
Oh! Oh, my...
Wow, the kids will love that.
The shed has been masterfully disguised by a bespoke pergola
that doubles up as a rather fancy chin-up bar.
When the children go,
you can... That moment, if that happens.
But you can run climbers all the way around that.
Those climbers are great habitats for sparrows.
Sparrows love to live in clematis.
And here you've got this lovely oval-shaped lawn.
I've used a species-rich lawn.
Basically, it's a mix of grass species.
We put in things like clover and wild flowers.
That's so far up my street.
And the clover will just be covered in bees. Yeah.
Oh, clover!
The cows love clover. Cows love clover?
What are you saying?
THEY LAUGH
Helen's stylish garden is packed with
wildlife-friendly design trickery,
providing ample room for both man
and mini-beast.
So, hopefully we've created something that works for you.
You certainly have, such a big transformation.
It's massive. It's huge.
Thank you. It's fantastic.
Thank you.
It's a really lovely scheme,
it plays lots of design tricks,
but we'll have to wait and see what they like.
They both absolutely... Nailed the brief. ..hit the brief,
and yet they're totally different. Yeah. How does that happen?
I don't know, it's magic!
To properly unpack her scheme for Pam and Marcus,
Helen's taken me to an amazing green space...
Oh, yes!
..designed by Barbara Samitier in South London.
It's like a little tropical paradise, isn't it?
It's just beautiful.
Here the design draws upon some of the same optical tricks
she's used for her vision
of Pam and Marcus's garden.
What's the deal with this place?
Long, thin garden. Which we thought was a bad thing.
Apparently not. But it's a really cool thing.
This garden has a stunning picture window.
And, like Helen's design, the composition of plants
and landscaping encourages the owners to step in.
That just looks so welcoming, doesn't it?
Yeah. It just looks as though the garden goes on forever.
It looks huge. It does.
And also it's kind of obscured with...
Can't quite see. Yeah.
You want to go and... Absolutely. ..explore it.
Shall we go and bathe in the ferns?
HELEN LAUGHS
It's so lush, it's so touchable.
I don't know if that's quite
what they were going for, but it works.
This garden feels anything but small or hemmed in.
Instead, there's a real sense of space.
You've got to be on your A game with these spiky leaves.
So, with this kind of long, thin garden,
what have they done to make it feel so vast?
What they've done really cleverly
is to split this long, thin garden
into a number of outdoor rooms.
So we've got the entrance area
down by the house, and then we've gone into the lounge,
and then we've got our dining area,
and then the garden's still going on.
So, just by breaking that long, thin space up into smaller compartments,
just allows us to sort of move through that space
and feel quite comfortable. Yeah. It's almost like little pockets.
You find little pockets
to do different things.
Once you've created your different areas,
then it's all about the shrewd planting.
We've got the repetition of the plants
bouncing your eye all the way up through, and then using the plants
to define those spaces.
So, here, this phormium here is marking out this new space.
So, say you want this look, can you buy it?
It feels like it might take a while.
For a garden like this, within four to five years,
you're really going to start to feel this green volume. But actually,
if you use ornamental grasses and some of these sebaceous perennials,
they're going to look pretty good. So if you plant them in the spring,
they're going to look good that summer. Instant gratification.
That's what we're all about. Absolutely.
Another simple yet effective device you can use
to make a garden appear bigger
is artfully placed mirrors.
I just don't think mirrors are something
that people immediately go,
"Yeah, I need one of those in my garden." It just reflects green,
but what it does, it almost feels like you've just punched a hole
through that wall. Yeah.
And, of course, there's this fantastic use of a mirror up here,
and that just gives you the feeling that the garden continues
the other side. It acts more like a window. Yeah.
Just makes you feel as though, even though you've got the wall,
the garden is going on the other side.
It's further and further on. Yeah. Yeah.
And the key to comfort in any garden
is choosing the right furniture to fit your space.
This terrace is a terrace that's been designed
for a big, comfy, generous sofa.
And that's the thing,
is thinking of it as another room.
All of the things that we can do inside,
we can do outside. Yeah.
We just need to get ourselves out there.
So, for any outdoor space, Helen's lesson
is that interior design tricks can work outside, too.
But will Pam and Marcus decide to embrace optical tricks with Helen,
or go for a woodland adventure with Tom?
Here at Garden Headquarters,
not everyone has generous budgets to transform huge plots,
so we cover compact spaces, too,
and they're just as challenging.
That's why I'm heading into the woods to visit Joel Bird -
superstar craftsman and mastermind of managing tight design budgets.
My philosophy is that I never say no.
I find a way to solve it.
Joel's been busy redesigning a small urban garden
into a family space.
Family gardens are so important,
especially for the people that we're seeing today.
Yeah, they've got two young kids and they want it to be a place
that's nice for them to be in,
but they don't want to turn it into a kids' playground.
These are more sophisticated than that. OK.
In the leafy suburbs of Ealing, West London,
there's a beautiful house
with a terrible secret.
A derelict wasteland of a garden!
So, as you can see, the floor is very uneven.
It's rotting and very dangerous,
and quite easily, you can fall through and hurt yourself.
WOOD CRACKS
Meet Ahmed and Rehab, and their two daughters,
three-year-old Aya
and three-month-old Leighanne.
These parents are so embarrassed by their garden,
it's been screened off for six years.
We put these blinds up temporarily to block our view of the garden,
so that when we're sat here having our dinner in the evening,
we don't want to look out at the garden
because it is in such a state.
Our three-and-a-half-year-old daughter doesn't even know
that we have a garden cos they're down all the time.
But a few weeks ago, that all changed.
We opened the door and she said, "Well, what's this?" And we said,
"Well, this is our garden."
She didn't even know we had one,
and that made me feel really, really bad
and I thought, "Yeah, we need to get this sorted."
After a costly interior renovation,
their house is picture-perfect,
but their garden doesn't match up.
It's also become a bit of a dumping ground.
I don't really like the purple colour.
We're quite overlooked from our neighbours, from all sides.
This small, 20-metre square plot not only lacks privacy,
it's a nightmare of mismatched walls, textures and colours.
We'd love the space to work for us as adults
and for our two young daughters as well.
We really want a place that the girls can enjoy
and have all their toys
and have a nice, child-friendly garden.
Ahmed and Rehab are desperate for a usable space,
but they're at a loss as to how to change it.
It kind of boggles my mind a little bit
that we can't resolve this small space,
considering what we've achieved with our home.
The garden just feels completely out of our comfort zone
and we really, really need the help getting this space sorted.
Ahmed and Rehab have arrived
to see if Joel can transform their building site.
So, Aya didn't even know there was a garden!
No, she had no idea we actually had a garden,
which is pretty embarrassing. We had the blinds down permanently,
because we just don't want to look at the garden.
Six years is a serious amount of time.
I mean, I'm indecisive, but six years with the blinds down...
When we first moved in, it was just the two of us.
And then we had a daughter. Then we had another daughter.
And before we knew it, six years had just gone by.
And here we are. And here we are.
THEY LAUGH
So, we've got some problems.
Yeah. Let's take a look at them.
So, is that a decking or the remnants of a decking?
So, it was a project that we started and then got to this stumbling block
where we don't really know what we want to do, we don't know where
we're going with this, then we just stopped. So we're definitely ready
for this garden to be done now.
And we want it for our daughters more, actually, than for us.
I think it's a bit too dangerous for... Yeah.
Three-year-old, three-month-old.
We need a place that's good for kids, right?
Yeah. Absolutely. Shall we talk about the dollars?
What's the budget?
It's up to, sort of, £8,000.
So, that is a whopping amount of money.
These guys have got money to spend, I like to say, but not to waste.
Yeah, OK. We can make an impact in that kind of space.
Yeah. You BETTER make an impact.
THEY ALL LAUGH
It may be a small space, but it needs a high-end finish,
so Joel will have to use every trick in the book to turn it around.
Shall we see what I've come up with?
Yes, please.
Let's. So...
Look at this!
ANGELA GASPS
Oh, wow! Wow.
Oh, that looks great.
I love it.
For £8,000, Joel has maximised the small space
by zoning it.
There's cooking, seating and play areas,
a miniature lawn,
and even a Japanese-style rockery.
Oh, I absolutely love this bit here.
I want to open that up so it's a little play area.
That's a great idea.
So, when the girls are not using it,
we can just tidy it away and it can just be a bench?
Yeah. I like that.
Is that a little water pool?
We can put a plastic container in
and that can be a water play centre, then. That's a great idea.
She'd absolutely love that. Oh! That's brilliant.
Kids are just coming across all of these things for the first time,
so the simplest of things can give them pleasure
and interest, can't they? Even the Japanese rockery,
you can imagine them exploring through that
like a wild little jungle.
And even with a healthy budget like this,
Joel is still repurposing leftover shingle from the front garden
and two-by-four wood from the old decking.
With that kind of budget,
it's a small garden that can make an impact,
the design stays roughly the same... Yeah.
..but with a bigger budget, you just get to use nicer materials.
To connect the garden with the plush inside,
Joel has used a high-end cedarwood.
At £28 a square metre,
it should last 20 years.
I think it sort of incorporates everything
that we kind of asked for. Yeah.
I love the fact that it's got the hidden-away storage.
I love the Japanese influence.
I love the different colours and the textures.
It's really, really nice.
You're quite chill.
I'm quite a chilled-out person, to be honest, yeah. OK.
That's why we haven't got our garden done.
ALL LAUGH
Cos we're too chilled out.
I loved the technology within the table.
It really helped me visualise our space.
That is something that we've struggled with in the past.
It was mind-blowing. It was brilliant.
I'm really looking forward to helping with the build,
especially after six years of seeing such a mess.
I think I'm really looking forward to getting my hands dirty.
Ahmed and Rehab have just one month to clear the space
before Joel's on site to finish the final design.
Over in St Albans, Hertfordshire,
Pam and Marcus's £60,000 build has already begun.
The 13-metre conifer has gone
and new trees are starting to come in.
Look at this!
Marcus, come and have a look at this beetle.
Wow! Look.
It's happening already. We've got more wildlife. Yay!
But whose design did they choose?
Tom created a wooded wonderland
full of secret little journeys and surprising pockets of space.
I was literally blown away by his ideas.
It's an absolute wildlife haven, which is exactly what I asked for.
Helen's design maximised the space and zoned the seating areas,
following the passage of the sun to maximise the light.
The moving of the seating, entertainment area
to halfway up the garden, very clever.
The thing that I really loved was the bug stacks,
and I specifically loved the colours of the flowers.
Both plans met the brief, but Pam Marcus could only choose one.
Marcus was slightly towards Tom's,
and I was slightly towards Helen's.
In the end, we put it to a family vote.
I was even. I didn't go either way.
And the other three said...
..Tom.
And we couldn't be happier.
Wahey!
Tom's winning design boldly removed all traces of the old layout,
replacing it with Pam and Marcus's very own lake and woodland.
Tom and I went to get some trees last week
and we've got 20 shrubs and trees,
and I'm panicking, you know,
"What have I bought? Where are they going to go?"
Tom has arrived on site to oversee the planting of these trees
that originally sold the design to Pam and Marcus.
Before, you just had evergreen, dense, heavy shrubs.
But I think you can see, with these,
it makes it feel more full of life and full of character
and, you know, it gives it that seasonal interest
that I think it was lacking before.
Yeah, just out into the garden a little bit.
Pam and Marcus have invested £5,000 of their 60K budget on these trees.
That'll do. Yeah.
The fruit on the hawthorn, crab apple and chokeberry trees
will attract wildlife in their droves.
People always underestimate how many plants you need to make a garden
feel mature and established.
The best way to save your money is to kind of get the maturity
that you need with the key plants,
but then saving money on smaller things elsewhere
that you don't mind taking time to grow.
You can see now, can't you, kind of, the layout?
Honestly, I'm like a child in a sweet shop at the moment.
Large hazelnut trees will screen the sheds,
providing that all-important camouflage for Pam,
as well as a nuttery for the squirrels.
They're so big!
SHE LAUGHS
Well, you didn't like my sheds, so... They are just so big,
but they're fantastic.
Can't wait till they're hiding Marcus's sheds.
I'm very pleased with that. Thanks very much.
The other thing that we've got are loads of plants that you can forage.
Things from redcurrant - so you can eat, you know,
a really good source of vitamin C... Absolutely, yeah.
Hazelnuts. Hazelnuts. Yeah.
Either you can let the animals have them
or you can use them yourself. Share. Share.
Turn it that way slightly.
With most of the plants and water feature yet to be installed,
there's still a long way to go before the space is the oasis
Pam and Marcus so desperately want.
It's been so exciting just seeing it all happen
and it's totally opened up the garden, hasn't it? Completely.
It's taken about two days
to turn our garden into a building site.
You know, I did say to them, "I hope you can put it all back together
"because, at the moment..." They've just destroyed it.
Earlier, small spaces superstar Joel Bird
created a stunning solution to transform this derelict wasteland
into a child-friendly space
in Ahmed and Rehab's West London family home.
With an £8,000 budget,
they want to create something really special.
After weeks of preparation,
Joel is on site to drive the build forward.
I'm here today to see Ahmed and Rehab in Ealing.
Their garden, right now, is basically a junkyard.
I'm keen to bring some life into the space.
So today I'm going to make a little miniature pond,
which is going to bring some wildlife in.
This is just my scene, so I can't wait to get started.
We're looking forward to Joel coming.
I think it's really exciting that he's going to be here.
To get the space ready, Ahmed and Rehab have cleared the garden
and hired a team of contractors to fix the walls
and create a blank canvas so Joel can work his magic.
Hi, Ahmed. How you doing, Joel? You all right? It's looking great.
Thank you very much. It's certainly a lot tidier than last time I came.
Yeah, absolutely.
To save money, Ahmed's pebbling the Japanese garden
whilst Joel's got a nifty idea to make a bespoke water feature
perfect for small spaces.
Today, I'm going to be making a pond in a pot. A lot of people want
a pond in their back garden,
but they haven't quite got the space or the money.
This is an easy way to get water into the garden
and the kids are going to love it.
So the first thing you're going
to need is a pot of some description.
I managed to pick up a second-hand ceramic pot online for around £30.
So, when we buy a ceramic pot,
it's always got a drainage hole in it,
so we need to block up that drainage hole,
and I'm going to use some marine putty,
because it's waterproof,
it takes about 15 minutes to go off.
You can get this for less than a tenner.
Next, we need to waterproof the pot,
so I'm just going to use some waterproof paint,
which you can pick up at any hardware shop.
Then we're going to use bricks or rocks.
We need to create the right height for planting the plants.
And it's also going to give the wildlife a route out of the pond
if they fall in.
Next comes the plants.
All of these plants are great
for bringing wildlife into your garden.
The iris is going to be great for bees and butterflies.
The miniature bulrush, the dragonflies love it.
And the forget-me-not
is particularly loved by newts.
Finally, we're going to put some
barley straw extract in there.
This is a nice way
to keep the water clear
and free from algae.
There you have it, a pond in a pot for less than £100.
Ready for the wildlife to move in.
The whole family can enjoy it
and it's going to re-energize this space.
With the mini water feature complete, there's still a long way
to go before this garden is done.
Joel needs to work on the finer details
to finish this stylish family space.
The last few weeks have been quite hectic,
so we've had builders coming in and out.
Obviously, from a space perspective, we've had to keep
a lot of the materials in the kitchen.
So that's sort of been out of bounds for the kids,
so it's quite tough from that perspective, but hopefully
with the end result, it'll be well worth it.
After six years of keeping their garden a secret,
Joel's design promised to create a
family space they'd be proud of.
Finally, his virtual vision is ready to be revealed.
For £8,000, this space
has been completely transformed
into a child-friendly adult retreat.
Sophisticated zones allow the family
to cook, dine, rest and play...
So, what do you think of your new garden?
I absolutely love the new garden.
It's everything that we really wanted in our outdoor space.
It's absolutely amazing.
As soon as you walk through the front door, you know,
you've got the curtains down, you can see straight through the house.
What can you see?
..as well as screening for privacy.
What about this one? Can you feel this one?
There's multisensory textures for the kids to explore,
including a pond in a pot...
Shall we see what's under here?
..and a hidden sandpit and water play area.
A sandpit! Sand!
How much do you think the kids are going to love it?
They're going to absolutely love this space. Yeah, absolutely.
I mean, we've got adult space.
We've got a nice place where we can make food, for a barbecue.
We've got really nice seating, but also a really nice play area.
It's brilliant.
Straight lines in the design have opened the space up,
while muted colours and minimal planting adds to an elegance
that matches the family's interior design choices.
The colour scheme, I think, really, really suits the garden
and it suits the house as well.
I wanted the plants to be the main attraction in the garden,
and that's exactly what we've got now,
and I'm really happy with the way all the colours have come together.
As the garden is so small,
they could afford to splash out on high-end materials
like the hardwearing cedarwood cladding
and the Yellow Balau decking.
It's been a great experience.
I think, you know, thanks to yourself, Joel,
I really, really enjoyed it. It's been quite stressful at times,
but I think, you know, it's been really, really, good,
really good fun.
It's worth it, isn't it, at the end when you can sit...?
It was absolutely worth it in the end, yeah. Definitely worth it.
I mean, it was a travesty, really.
Those big doors were shut and they had curtains on them
because they could not bear to look at the garden.
So it's really just nice to see them getting
into this space and enjoying it.
They look really happy.
The garden being completed has been a long time coming.
I'm just really looking forward to just getting out there
and making the most of it.
And if converting a wasteland into a gorgeous space wasn't enough...
..after dark, the outdoor lighting really sets it off.
It's just nice to be able to throw open the doors
and actually just enjoy the space.
I feel like it's finally a garden that we can be proud of.
Just 30 miles north,
the work on Pam and Marcus's Hertfordshire garden
is also complete.
The plot was enormous and acted more like a corridor than a garden.
The lawn was an unutilised wasteland.
The overgrown conifer was sucking the life from the Earth below.
The view from the house was uninviting -
the main attraction, Marcus's uninspiring sheds.
Tom's virtual vision tackled the corridor garden
by rewilding it into a woodland park
filled with quirky nooks and its very own lake.
Two months on, have they been able to recreate a wild woodland
in their very own back garden?
Wow! Look at this!
Oh, my gosh!
It's amazing!
It's a proper little woodland, isn't it?
Like, it doesn't feel like a traditional garden
in any sense of the word.
Well, it's not, is it? It's what we were after, so... Yeah.
Patio, lawn, shed - gone.
Gone!
To solve the problem of the corridor garden,
Tom removed the lawn entirely,
creating meandering walkways through a wilderness
of trees, plants and waterways.
It looks a little bit dangerous.
You need to be on full alert. A bit of peril. Yeah.
Yes, there's stepping stones, there's water, there's all sorts.
A stream! Yeah. A brook.
It gets properly wild.
It's fantastic.
To suit their nature.
Yeah. Yes.
The towering conifer has been replaced by a selection of trees,
carefully chosen to bring seasonal structure and life into the space
for decades to come.
We've already seen frogs and bees yesterday. Have you?
Dragonflies.
It's been absolutely fantastic.
Which is what you were after, isn't it? Exactly what I was after.
A woodland... Yes. ..garden...
It's absolutely amazing. ..for a woodland nymph.
Yeah. Oh, thanks.
THEY ALL LAUGH
In its infancy now,
by spring, the garden will come alive,
and in five years, it will be positively flourishing.
We've got lots of wild flower meadow turf,
which is full of natives,
but we've also interspersed that with lots of different
non-native plants like salvias, Mediterranean herbs.
So, you know, for cooking, you've got your rosemary or sage.
This will all fill out.
This will feel really kind of abundant and full.
You won't see any soil in a year's time. OK.
The driving force behind the garden's transformation
has always been Pam's love of nature.
I feel like this is going to be the place
that you perch quite regularly.
Yeah, I mean, I've already practised sitting here... Go on.
..a few times.
You just sit down. It doesn't move.
And just listen.
One of my fears was that the stream would take up too much of the room
and take away the green,
and, actually, totally unfounded.
Instead of taking away space,
it's added volume, it's added the water,
it's added, you know, the different species,
it's added the plant life.
What was it about water?
Because a lot of people don't really think of water in their garden.
No. I think it's because you have to have water for life.
It feeds. It's relaxing.
It's just nature at its best.
The end of the garden is still Marcus's territory,
but the sheds have been screened off by forageable trees.
The space within, converted into a play zone.
That is quite a fire pit.
Well, big family. Yeah.
Great, isn't it? It's just a bit of a fun area.
You know, when it's cold at night, we're going to sit round this
and just chill out and have beers.
It's great. Camping, but you can go into your bed.
Yeah. Like, the sense of camping.
The sense of camping. Well, well done, you, for going for it.
Yeah. We are coming on to the sort of... Next stage.
..next stage of your working life and you're going,
well, actually, if we didn't do it now and we said,
"Well, let's wait till we retire in ten, 15 years' time,"
you would have just had ten, 15 years of not having it. Yeah.
How did we do on the money front?
It's gone slightly over budget.
I think it came in at about 66,000 in the end, which is a lot of money,
but... Yeah. ..it's almost the biggest room in your house,
you know, and we use it all the time. So you say,
"Well, let's just treat it as almost like an extension to the house,"
and say, "Right, let's finance it and let's get it done."
And I absolutely love it.
If you want something to be a certain way,
you have to spend money on it. Yeah. And we've done that.
Tom has given Pam and Marcus an utterly unique outside space.
I do feel like the most special thing about this garden
is the sense of adventure that it asks you to explore.
Bring your inner child. Yeah!
That's why I want... It does a bit.
I wanted it to take you back to your childhood... Yeah.
..where you'd jump across streams.
Like, even the whole balancing on rocks is quite...
It is quite a child-y...
I don't know if I'll make that one, but, like...
Yeah! And then on to there.
Yeah.
It's quite playful, you know.
This garden is definitely not sterile.
It is the opposite of sterile.
Yeah. It's wild and hardy, but dainty.
It's a good 'un. I know. I'm glad you like it.
I do love it.
This kind of design feels properly bold,
but it's clear Pam and Marcus are thrilled with the results.
Thanks to both of you for taking the plunge and for, you know,
for going for it. I just want to see
how it's going to look over the next year, the next five years,
the next ten years. Absolutely. Thank you very much. Look after it.
Absolute pleasure. It's been gorgeous, really. Thank you.
With play at the centre of Tom's vision,
why stop the fun when the sun goes down?
Goes well, doesn't it? It's a good fire.
Yeah, you can see the heat coming out of the top of the chimney.
And I have no doubt, as the woodland matures,
this family will be making the most of it out here
for years to come.
This is really cool, actually. It's really nice.
It's great, isn't it? Yeah.
Next time...
A problem patio gets a tropical makeover.
Can't sit under there. It's like being in hell.
THEY LAUGH
It's a magical space now.
And one couple's concrete nightmare
is transformed into an unrecognisable wonderland.
Wow!
LAUGHTER
Wow, look at that!
SHE SHRIEKS
THEY ALL LAUGH