FIRST PERSON
Creating Exceptional Contemporary Garden Settings Interview with Jean Louis and Jeannette de Buck, Artgarden
What services do you offer at Artgarden? Delivery and installation of artificial lawn and technical decking, garden landscaping, and all kinds of reforms and refurbishing inside and outside the home. What is it you love most about your job? We see and feel every garden and every house as if we are working in our own home. We love to keep to our budgets so that our clients only pay what was budgeted. We take pride in taking care of all the work in a way that, when we finish the job, our clients don’t have to clean up or move furniture. Everything we do is aimed at having happy clients, as this is the best way to keep us loving our job. We love gardens and we are always searching for new materials and plants to achieve better results with less upkeep and minimal demand on water. Finally we are extremely proud that our company is already 25 years old! What has been your most unusual project to date? Last year we were asked to create a 3,000 square metre garden that required very low maintenance with a greenhouse for vegetables and an attractive
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organic vegetable area – all with a modern look to fit in with the outstanding contemporary villa. The result was fantastic! We laid 1,500 square metres of artificial lawn with a little forest of olive, lemon and orange trees with an extended area of hanging rosemary and lavender. There were organic vegetables grown in raised gardens surrounded by all kinds of fruit trees, a huge Mediterranean forest to protect the soil from falling down the slope, palm trees and a large variety of Phormium plants. What have been the main trends in gardening and landscaping in recent years? Many garden owners are tired of depending on gardeners to take care of their property when they are not in Spain, and also of having to pay huge water bills. Water in Spain, especially on the Costa del Sol, is very expensive. Water companies punish high water consumption with increasing prices. In some larger gardens, owners pay up to €3.84 per cubic metre of water. Artificial lawns, decking and the use of Mediterranean plants that are drought-resistant and adapted to the poor soils in our area reduce the water bill by as much as 20 per cent.
On the other hand, modern garden design has to capture the spirit of modern architecture. Minimalistic gardens, big areas of the same plants grouped together, the use of building materials for pads and terraces that reflect the materials used in the house, modern decking and finally, artificial lawns are becoming more and more popular in recent years. Owners of small gardens are able to use their garden as an extension of their terrace, without the need for a gardener or having to do lots of work during their free time. What are the benefits of artificial grass? Throughout my lifetime plants have always been a great part of my life. When I was a child, I could spend hours with my grandmother kneeling in her rock garden taking out weeds or splitting plants to replant them a few metres away. Walking with my dogs in nature, observing the plants I see along the way, makes me calm and happy. You can imagine I was not particularly ecstatic the day my husband came up with the idea of selling artificial grass! In fact, it was the only time in our trajectory working together that we were really disappointed. A few weeks later,
MAY � JUNE ���6
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29/04/16 11:53