Exotic, huge, sculptural garden, featuring tropical/Mediterranean-zone plants. Dramatic, architectural planting including bananas, large tree ferns and rare palms, weave along curving stone paths, culminating in a paradise garden. A modern take on the rockery embeds glacial boulders amid dry zone plants, including many succulents. Sculptures by artist owner.
We have a new area with gravelled beds and a view over the covered reservoir to Highgate Woods, and Kenwood in the distance. There are two wonderful stone terraces with lovely seating, sculptural teak roots from Indonesia, and an addition of 1.5 tons of glacial boulders and Westmoreland limestone rocks.
We were open for the National Garden Scheme for health and nursing charities in September 2025 (with tea and delicious cakes!). We welcomed 185 visitors, raising over £1400 for the NGS charities this year, and more than £7,200 during our 6 years of opening.
Our NGS website: https://ngs.org.uk/gardens/12-lauradale-road-n2/
In September 2024 we had a visit from the Islington Art Society – Art in the Park group. See their paintings and blog here, and our page on the visit here.
The Paradise garden has several seating areas and a large central water feature – specially commissioned from India – as the hub of a network of curving stone paths. It is surrounded by a circular bed of fragrant herbs. An exotic orchard comprises pomegranate, peach, quince, apricot, loquat, prickly pear, fig and black mulberry and is complemented by a stone terrace featuring a fruiting lemon tree.
A Hartley Botanic greenhouse with a curved glass roof houses a propagation bench and many tender plants including cacti. A stand of Jaquemontii birch frames a view of Highgate Woods. Arid beds feature aloes and agaves. A small natural pond encourages wildlife.
Established palms, some of which are seven metres high, have recently been complemented by a variety of types, for instance a Chilean wine palm which will one day dwarf them. Banana varieties include musa basjoo, ensete ventricosum and musella lasiocarpa. Other standout plants include tasmarisk, tetrapanax papyfer rex, grevilleas, tea trees, cycads, dasylirion, beschorneria, bamboos, yucca rostrata, bottle brush, bird of paradise, cistus, strawberry tree and mimosa. Mediterranean herbs feature throughout the garden, as does a wide range of pittosporums.
The garden design and implementation started in 2016, and is the result of a seven-year evolution in collaboration with garden designer Steve Buckley, starting with watercolour designs by me of our dream garden. Over twenty tons of stone from India and Portugal were used to create a structure to set off the planting to realise the design. The garden is very mature now.
Everything came in by hand through the side entrance – soil, shingle, gravel, stones, giant bowl, greenhouse, plants!
