When we first visited the quarry it had been closed for forty years. The floor was a field of abandoned blocks, some the size of cars, each one quarried and then rejected for a flaw nobody could now remember.
Those blocks became our palette. We catalogued more than eleven hundred of them, photographing and measuring each one, then designed the garden’s steps, walls and benches around what we had rather than what we wanted.
Planting for limestone
Limestone makes thin, alkaline, fast-draining soil, and the plants that thrive in it are some of the richest communities in Britain. We worked with ecologists to plant a hundred and forty native species, most grown from seed collected within five miles of the site.
“We did not design a garden for the quarry. We helped the quarry become one.”
Four years on, the terraces look as if they have always been there. Visitors often ask what was here before. Our favourite answer is: exactly the same stone, just in a different order.
