Turner Contemporary Margate

As last week was half term we decided to go to the Turner Contemporary Gallery in Margate where there was an exhibition of Alex Katz's work.  Its full of very bright colours and is elegant in its simplicity, quite child-like in a way and makes you think "I could do that", but...

You're not allowed to take photos so here are some images from the Turner Contemporary Gallery's website.  Its worth a visit if you are down that way although I expected it to be a bit bigger, only three exhibition spaces upstairs and one of those was with works from recent art students.  After the Turner Gallery you should venture into Margate itself, the amusement arcades, a trip to Morrison's.  Remember Brian Glover in An American Werewolf in London: "Stay on the road, keep clear of the moors..."

  

The Turner Contemporary Galley on Margate seafront looking like a fish packing house from this angle.

On the land that once housed Benbom Bros. and then Dreamland Amusement park Tesco want to build a superstore!  On the seafront.  Read more at 

http://www.tescopoly.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1325&Itemid=111 

Now whilst Margate may not be the most attractive of seafronts in a couple of areas and the 1960s style Arlington House could do with pulling down, do we really need our Victorian style beaches blighted by a Tesco when there is already a Morrison's 200 yards away and another Tesco Extra 2.6 miles away?

Small Family Garden

The brief for this garden was to create a low maintenance family garden with all year colour, somewhere to sit and eat, and to also keep the shed and the vegetable planter.  The soil gets quite claggy in the winter as it is generally clay and is in the flood plain area near Ashford in Kent so planting had to be appropriate.  The client was happy with the design and the garden was built by Outdoor Creations once again.  I will upload some photos of the finished garden when I get some.

Terrace Design Photos

I have been sent some photos of the terrace area that has been built by Outdoor Creations and I thought I would share them with you.  I am very pleased with the result, as is the client, so big hugs all round!

 All photos by Graeme from Outdoor Creations.

Terrace Design

One of my designs has finally been built!  Those nice people at Outdoor Creations asked me to accompany them to a client near Brands Hatch to see if I had any suggestions for a terraced area to the rear of a rather nice property in the country. 
So, I had a ponder and decided that there should be room for entertaining with enough room to walk around and there should also be enclosure from the planting.  I wanted to use a dark coloured stone and luckily the client decided to go for a dark granite inlaid with some hardwood timber.  I drew up two versions and sent them off and the client decided to go with the second option without the raised planters.

The original plan with dining area and seating area with raised planters

The revised plan without seating area and ground level planting 

Outdoor Creations doing their thing, creating...outdoors

So, before...

...still before...

...and still before...

...and now, all shiny and new.

Planting at the Olympic Park

 I thought you might like to see some of the planting styles at the Olympic Park.  It has a definite wild meadow look about it with different areas showing or representing different areas of the world.  Some areas were looking better than others but all in all it looked very good and very colourful, I just hope it gets the chance to reseed itself and thrive from here.

Some gabions and EPDM for you Landscape Architects, ooh!

However, there were a couple of large screens cleverly located in the river with banks either side so people could view them easily.  We were there in the first week before the atheletics stadium had opened and people were already trampling the planting and sitting in the bioswales!  "Mum, my bum feels a bit wet!"  Still, as long as we can all herd together and watch tv.