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Designing Better Outdoor Environments for Care
Garden design, planting and landscape consultancy for care homes and later-living settings
A well-designed care-home garden should do more than simply provide an attractive setting around a building. It forms part of the residents’ everyday environment — something that can be seen from bedrooms and communal spaces, walked through, sat within and enjoyed throughout the seasons.
At Wey Meadows, the aim was to create a landscape that felt like a garden rather than an institutional planting scheme. The design needed to provide structure and year-round interest while also introducing colour, movement, fragrance and seasonal change. Just as importantly, it had to respond to the practical requirements of a care setting, including accessibility, maintenance, irrigation and the long-term establishment of the planting.
Wey Meadows, Elstead — The Brief
The brief was to create a planting scheme that would provide genuine interest for the people living at Wey Meadows, while also creating an attractive environment for staff and visitors and supporting wildlife.
“From the outset, Sue really understood our vision: to create beautiful, welcoming outdoor spaces that would feel like a genuine extension of the home and, most importantly, enhance the lives of the people living there.”
CHD LIVING, Wey Meadows
Wey Meadows is a substantial new-build care home with more than 60 bedrooms arranged over three storeys, with with approximately 420 m² of planting across the site including the main entrance, parking, central courtyard and resident garden spaces. The scale and mass of the building, together with the prominent parking to the front of the site, meant that the planting also needed to soften the architecture and reduce the visual impact of the car park.
The Design Approach
Wey Meadows is a large building, with the garden experienced from many different viewpoints. There are views from individual bedrooms, day rooms and communal spaces, as well as social patios and routes through the landscape itself. The planting therefore needed to work at several levels: as something to look out onto from inside the building, as a setting for sitting and socialising, and as a garden to move through and experience at close range.
The planting approach deliberately moves away from large areas of conventional shrub planting, which can provide structure but can also feel static.
Instead, the scheme incorporates plants that are more active within the garden — grasses that sway and rustle, perennials that flower over long periods, and plants whose form, colour and texture change through the seasons. The aim was to create a garden that feels alive, while retaining a strong framework throughout the year and remaining practical to maintain.
Site Constraints
Wey Meadows presented a number of practical constraints that directly influenced the planting design. The scale of the building, prominent parking and access routes, changing light conditions and restricted soil depths all required different responses across the site.
One of the most significant constraints was within the central courtyard, where there was approximately 500 mm of soil above a solid concrete base. This limited the available rooting depth and meant that plant selection, drainage and long-term establishment needed particularly careful consideration. In some areas, substantial containers provided a practical way of introducing larger trees while also becoming an integral part of the design.
Trees, Scale and Structure
Trees were important in helping to reduce the apparent scale of the three-storey building.
The elegant, Multi-stem Amelanchier lamarckii is repeated throughout the site for its adaptability to sun and partial shade. Its open habit and elegant branching structure introduce height without creating a dense canopy, making it particularly useful around buildings and within more intimate garden spaces.
Structure was not provided by trees and evergreen shrubs alone.
Ornamental grasses also play an important role throughout the scheme, and even the more functional parts of
the site were treated as part of the residents’ experience of the landscape.
Many grasses are left standing through winter, when their faded seed heads and sandy stems continue to provide movement, texture and a softer framework within the garden. They are cut back in spring, just before the new growth begins to emerge.
Boundary planting was also carefully considered, particularly along one of the more shaded edges of the site.
This was an important border because it is viewed directly from the building, despite also forming part of the access road and car park edge. Clipped trees, Photinia × fraseri ‘Red Robin’ were used to help screen neighbouring air-conditioning units, while Hydrangea petiolaris was introduced against the tall boundary fence to soften its height over time.
Photinia × fraseri ‘Red Robin’ is a robust, easily maintained evergreen tree. Its hardiness and resilience made it well suited to this position, where planting needed to cope with the less favourable conditions created by the adjacent air-conditioning equipment. It responds well to clipping and can be trained to form a dense canopy. The fresh growth emerges a strong red before maturing to green, adding seasonal colour, with clusters of small white flowers appearing in late spring.
Along the same boundary, Prunus lusitanica forms a strong evergreen
hedge, broken at regular intervals by repeated rounded forms of Pittosporum. These darker structural elements are softened with Geranium ‘Rozanne’, while bright sweeps of Hakonechloa macra ‘Aureola’ and ferns bring light, movement and texture to the shaded foreground.
Across the scheme, structure was used not simply to organise the planting, but to shape views, soften boundaries and reduce the scale of the architecture. Trees, hedging, clipped evergreen forms and ornamental grasses provide a framework that remains effective throughout the year, while the softer planting brings movement, seasonal change and a more natural character to the landscape.
Biodiversity and Climate Resilience
Biodiversity was also an important consideration. The planting was selected not only for colour, structure and seasonal interest, but also to provide nectar, pollen and habitat for bees, butterflies and other wildlife. It was noticeable that as the planting began to establish, butterflies quickly started to appear in the garden — a small but very tangible sign that the landscape was beginning to function as intended.
The scheme was also designed with long-term resilience in mind, using plants capable of coping with increasingly hot, dry summers and with the specific conditions found across the site. This combination of climate resilience and biodiversity helps create a garden that feels active, changing and connected to the wider natural environment.
“Sue has also carefully considered the long-term sustainability of the landscape, incorporating climate-resilient planting designed to respond to increasingly hot, dry summers. Biodiversity has been an important part of the design, with planting that creates a welcoming habitat for bees, butterflies and other wildlife, allowing residents to enjoy a garden that feels alive and connected to nature.”
CHD Living
Planting Character and Spacial Experience
LIGHT AND SHADE
The different light conditions around the building were also fundamental to the planting design.
Around the more shaded social patios, Hydrangeas, Fatsia japonica and Leucothoe are combined with clipped yew cones, introducing year-round structure and a degree of formality.
Hakonechloa brings movement and softness between these stronger forms, while Bergenias provide broad, substantial foliage, ferns introduce a finer texture and dark-leaved Heucheras add depth and contrast.
One of the north-facing day rooms opens onto an intimate patio, where varied textures and shades of green give the planting depth while retaining a calm character.
Repetition is used deliberately, creating familiarity and visual continuity rather than relying on high-impact plants that could make the space feel overly busy.
BATHED IN LIGHT
In the sunnier central courtyard, the planting becomes lighter and more open.
Stipa tenuissima, Sesleria and Echinacea are combined with Nepeta and other flowering perennials to create movement and a long season of interest. Ground-cover roses were planted in raised containers in response to the site constraints, but this also had the positive effect of lifting the flowers closer to eye level and introducing stronger areas of colour within the courtyard.
Sesleria autumnalis is a semi-evergreen grass woven through the courtyard. It is particularly useful because it performs well in both full sun and dappled shade. Its warm apple-green foliage combines beautifully with the light, open seedheads of Sanguisorba.
Growing to around 50 cm high and wide, it can be planted more densely to create a low, softly defined edge or a more continuous, meadow-like effect. It is what is known as a cool-season grass, getting into growth early in spring and providing fresh structure before many later grasses begin to emerge.
Stipa gigantea provides height and a more architectural grass element.
It is semi-evergreen, forming a substantial clump of narrow green leaves with tall, airy flowering stems held well above the foliage.
The flower heads can be left in place through autumn and into winter for as long as they remain attractive. Once wind and rain begin to break them down, the old flowering stems can be cut back into the main framework of the plant.
The foliage is better treated as an evergreen grass rather than routinely cut to ground level. In spring, comb through the clump to remove dead leaves and accumulated material, and trim away untidy outer foliage where necessary. I generally retain the green framework and only cut more heavily if the plant has become damaged or particularly congested.
Other plants within the courtyard are repeated throughout the scheme to create rhythm and visual continuity. Rounded forms of Pittosporum ‘Tom Thumb’ act as dark colour anchors within the planting, their compact shape contrasting with the looser movement of the surrounding grasses. Elsewhere, Deschampsia is combined with Nepeta, Salvia ‘Blue Note’, Sanguisorba ‘Pink Tanna’, Calamintha and Allium ‘Millenium’ to create a softer, more ethereal layer, with fine textures, movement and flowers carried over a long season.
TREES AND CONTAINERS
Because of the site constraints, several of the trees were planted in substantial containers rather than directly into the ground.
Two 1m3 planters flank the main entrance, while four pale grey containers are positioned within the secure courtyard.
The trees provide immediate height and structure and, within the courtyard, also play a practical role in casting shade over nearby seating areas used by residents and visiting family members.
The containers themselves became part of the visual language of the scheme. At the main entrance, the two larger planters were specified in a deep black-green, creating a strong contrast with the building, while the pale grey courtyard planters sit more quietly within the lighter paving and planting palette.
Integral irrigation was incorporated into the planters to make watering straightforward and support successful establishment.
WATER FEATURE
A small trough water feature provides another point of interest within the courtyard.
We used a low trough in the same deep tone as the entrance planters, positioning it as a focal point. The seating is arranged to face the trough, allowing residents and visitors to enjoy it at close range. It is surrounded by Cerney Stone, a soft, irregular gravel, with Lavender, Verbena bonariensis and grasses planted through the stone to soften the edges and integrate it into the surrounding scheme.
Solar-powered pumps create gentle ripples across the surface, adding movement that can also be appreciated from inside the building.
Low-voltage lighting, powered through the solar system, extends the effect into the evening. It is a simple intervention, but one that adds movement, sound, light and another sensory dimension to the garden.
COURTYARD BOUNDARY
The courtyard itself is enclosed by black railings and is framed along the car park boundary with Elaeagnus × ebbingei. Its evergreen foliage, with silvery-grey tones to the leaves, helps soften the boundary and continues the lighter, more ethereal character of the planting while also providing year-round screening and structure.
STRUCTURE AND MOVEMENT / CALAMAGROSTIS
This combination of structure and movement became an important part of the overall design language: enough evergreen and architectural planting to give the garden clarity throughout the year, but with a much greater emphasis on grasses and perennials to introduce seasonal change, wildlife value and a sense of life within the landscape.
QUIET CORNERS
On the north side of the building, the bedroom areas required a quieter and more structured treatment. Individual spaces were divided with simple evergreen hedging, providing definition and a degree of privacy without making the landscape feel enclosed or heavy. Prunus lusitanica, with its dark elongated foliage and red-brown stems, is used alongside Griselinia littoralis, whose fresh apple-green foliage provides a lighter contrast.
Across the scheme, structure helps soften the scale of the building, frame views and screen more functional areas. Evergreen forms and grasses provide year-round interest, while softer planting brings movement, seasonal change and a more natural character.
From Construction to Establishment
The transformation at Wey Meadows has been gradual, with the landscape developing as the planting establishes. What began as a hard, newly constructed setting is becoming a softer, more layered garden with increasing seasonal interest and a stronger relationship to the building.
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