We remodelled this garden while our friends at Musson Brown Architects were busy refurbishing and extending this handsome brick townhouse in South Shields. This relatively small plot was overlooked and dominated by the large Victorian building when we arrived, so we needed to make a garden that was at once elegant and strong, to hold its own while providing sanctuary for the clients. Houses of this quality were built to celebrate craftsmanship and detailing, and on our fist visit we admired the stunning tiled floors to the porch and entrance lobby. This inspired us to take this strong tradition of good quality materials and attention to pattern, junctions and colour into the built form of the garden, where we created bespoke paths and terraces from specially cut stone. Thinking about and drawing each slab, coping, step and edging took us back to the meticulous attention to detail that makes buildings like this such cherished and permanent features of our towns and villages, going the extra mile to unite garden and architecture through the colour, texture and finish of our hard materials. We kept the planting structurally strong above eye level, with columnar, multi-stem evergreen pleached trees providing lush mass and screening, underplanted with sophisticated tones of green, silver and cool hues.