Royal Tennis Court Hampton Court Palace
A sensory space.
We were briefed to create two spaces for this project within the confines of strict historic monuments and conservation regulations. One domestic space was for the live-in professional, his wife and young son, and the second a public space for RTC members.
The domestic space is a garden of two halves with on side in intense shade with established trees dominating the space and the other half receiving a good level of direct sun throughout the day.
For the sun trap half of the domestic garden we drew on the surrounding wilderness and notion of Tudor productive gardens to create a tiered space that mostly consisted of herbs and plants that were edible and highly textural as well as key pollinator plants. We introduced a tiered water feature leading to a pond with aquatic plants to create a soothing and calm space within an entertaining patio. Bee keeping was a hobby of one of our clients so we created a space for hives to be kept.
Within the shaded part of the garden we created willow cubbyhouse hide and emphasised a woodland space for adventure as the son typically used this space to build stick forts and play.
A luscious space.
We undertook a planting scheme that introduced a dense native and non-native palette of plants and trees to intensely rewild this domestic space. We created several levels and tiers to create natural habitats and give a rich biodiversity gain with the density in planting also further enhancing privacy from the public areas of Hampton Court Palace.
A social space.
In the RTC members garden we were tasked with creating a space for the members to socialise in during match play and organised events. The space needed to have an outdoor kitchen space, dining facilities, covered areas, play area for children and a storage area for maintenance equipment.
The space also needed to be configured in a way that would provide spaces for small intimate groups socialising on an ad-hoc basis and broad open space to accommodate large gala style events.
The design centred around using planting and materials that related to the Tudor period and the materiality that went into producing the equipment for Real Tennis such as cork trees, maple, willow, fruit trees, etc. The space layout itself was configured drawing the proportions of a Real Tennis overlapping on each other with the pergola structure replicating the service penthouse angled form.
