Front Yard at Electronic City

With our extended stay at electronic city, we learnt about the close knitted circles of people here and it wasn’t surprising when we were referred by one of our previous clients to Mr and Mrs. Likitha for their Front yard Garden renovation.


We had in fact seen the house multiple times in passing, given that it is located at the entrance of a major street crossing.
The meeting with Mrs. Likitha prompted us to diagnosing their set of problems with their garden.

The Problems

The garden was primarily taken care of by their House servant, though the plants were in good health and were tended to with good care, the garden lacked structure. Multiple varieties of plants were planted all over the place and it was certainly an unwelcoming sight being the Front yard of the house.

The garden needed lot of sorting and everyone in the household loved the feel of lawn, were terribly missing it in their garden space.

We also figured that they liked being seated outdoors for relaxation, meetings usually took place in the Front space of the house which were rather frequent since they were one of the well known families in the neighborhood.

The vegetable garden patch along the retaining back wall needed minor construction to define layouts and maximize yields. The soil throughout the garden had only one variety of manure for years and needed enrichment.

A storage room at the back end of the entrance was a view they despised and needed some attention.

The Planning

We worked out a plan to first redistribute the existing plants into other parts of the garden, many of them to be moved mainly to the backyard.

A seating space added with a backrest planter box was planned, the planter box took care of the planting needs of the garden as well as being a backrest, served it’s purpose as a relaxed bench.

It also was planned to be at least 4 ft high as to hide the ugly wall of the storage house.

Wooden planks with drooping and colorful plants were planned on the wall to further accentuate the wall. We chose Bamboo to add feature to the whole area with an objective of keeping a natural feel. The roofing extension of the storage space was planned to be hidden with Bamboo screening.

The entrance to this garden space had to be defined and we planned for planter boxes to be constructed with wide bricks which can also act as additional seating space if required.

The area between the seating space and the entrance to the garden was marked as lawn area as decided previously during our initial discussions, we also planned on using stepping stones between the lawn to have access to all the areas of the garden space.

The Execution –

This project was executed with client’s laborers as opposed to our usual way of working where in, every aspect of the process is taken care of, by us. They had laborers regularly working for them with their own buildings and we agreed to only provide consultation, designing and supervision during the execution – co ordinating with their laborers.

With a week’s job of repotting of existing plants, prepping up of the soil, masonry at the vegetable garden patch as well as Front yard, visiting multiple nurseries for the selection and purchases of plants, we were finally ready to bring the garden alive.

The coming week was dedicated to planting – We worked together with the laborers and our clients too joined hands in planting, this was a great experience to their son just at the age Five (5).

Several other additions were made during the process, like addition of Clay pots for their Balconies, a bamboo lattice for creeper varieties in the vegetable patch, addition of a century old unused stone wet grinder (a hand implement) as a centre piece in the garden.

This family has lived in this locality for generations and we heard
lots of stories of how urban development took over the place from a silent village to bustling “Electronic city” within a few years. Their home was filled with centuries old wood and other antique pieces preserved neatly.