Each garden reflects its owner`s personality. Owner of this garden is a talented and unordinary man, full of energy. It means we were about to create a garden which would be described in the same words. It has been an ambitious and in some ways adventurous project.
A very interesting goal had been set by the customer – the future garden was to be associated with Alice in Wonderland, his favourite book. Indeed everything in the garden - its structure, decoration of its particular areas, its plants, elements, dimensions and shapes - resembles Wonderland.
But the garden is not only about design; it’s also a living space. That is why the garden provides all the opportunities for spending time outside.
The garden can be divided into two large areas: frontyard: spacious zone in front of the house and a backyard which is a fairy labyrinth. The Frontyard is surrounding the main entrance. It welcomes guests and the owners and is designed for merry celebrations and parties. The Backyard is divided into a number of small gardens. It resembles a labyrinth which leads you into a world of fantasy and fairy tales.
The Frontyard.
A classical circular entrance is decorated with a laminar fountain – a true engineering masterpiece. Each fountain jet represents a light conductor, which transmit light like optic fiber. This effect has been achieved through the laminarity of the jets – the molecules of water have an ordered structure. Ideally straight, perfect jets interflow and drift apart, “dance” owing to a program control. In the dark they get coloured in accordance with the music.
The fountain also hides a secret and is reminiscent of famous Peterhof fountains. Sensors installed into the pathways reflect any movement. As soon as the master of the house walks his guest to a certain point, a jet of cold water spurts over the “victim”.
The fountain is surrounded by parterres framed by strict hedgerows of cornel trees, thujas and clipped lindens. The parterres are decorated with perennials and additionally with tulips in spring and exotic annual plants in summer.
Next to the entrance zone there are a cocktail area and a stage. A space behind the stage is being used as a performers’ dressing room and a storage, it is hidden with a hedgerow of thujas.
Between the stage and the house there is a rectangular reservoir crossed with a path of white plates. Plates’ bearing is hidden to create an illusion of the plates lying on the water. In the dark a water cascade flowing into the reservoir is illuminated with optical fiber conductor.
Linden archs mark an entrance to private zone (backyard), which welcomes guests with a karaoke bar and a lawn.
In the middle of the lawn there is a merry-go-round decorated with “Alice in Wonderland” characters. Behind the carousel there is a fairy labyrinth already mentioned before.
The Fairyland consists of a number of small gardens different in decoration and functions.
Alley of globe-shaped apple trees, which get pink blossom in spring, is accompanying passage from the house porch to the first small garden surrounded with a hedgerow of fir trees. One of the garden’s highlights is a beautiful oak tree. Under the canopy of the oak tree there is transparent table for “mad tea parties” with the March Hare and Hatter. There are various types of paving materials used in this garden – from different sorts of clinker bricks to granite flagstones and larch blocks.
Now we leave the tea party and move forward to the next garden - along the path of sandstones through a number of pergolas twined round with lianas. Soon everything starts to change – suddenly the space starts to shrink. The path is getting narrow and goes up, and the pergolas are getting shorter and thinner.
You will have to experience what it is like to be a giant and bend down while entering the next garden. Here you realize what Alice felt after having eaten a piece of mushroom making her grow. Flat crowns of short lindens, paving of small bricks, tiny leaves and flowers as well as wonderful illuminating lamps in the shape of a mushroom by Robers create an enchanting atmosphere. Distorting mirrors on the walls of hand-made bricks and petite doors with big padlocks supplement to this magic feeling.
There is no Alice Fairyland without pack of cards. A classic rotunda in the next white garden is specially intended for playing cards.
In the centre of “chess garden” there is a giant granite board with classic Staunton chess surrounded with thujas in the shape of chess-men.
On the way to the house there is a tiny symmetrically designed garden with a bench surrounded by strict lines of hedges, here you can have a rest and enjoy fragrances of roses and sages.
An eastern part of the garden is hidden from strangers’ eyes and is meant to decorate a spa zone. The spa zone is separated from a coloured mat of meadow perennials and cereals flowering under the canopy of birches with a glass wall.
All gardens of the fairy labyrinth are separated from each other with hedgerows of thujas, lindens, decorative apple trees as well as fir trees – in the most shadowed zones. Footpaths in this part of the garden are made of Caspian pebble.
A 4-meter hedgerow of thujas surrounding the garden serves as a fence.
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