You either have it or you don’t… a garden with a view that is, and this lucky client has one hell of a view! The garden already has a large patio leading from the house, but this isolated corner of the long garden, lent itself perfectly to creating an idyllic intimate deck area under the tree, to take in the unspoiled views of rolling countryside and amazing sunsets.

There were two ways to design and build this deck, the easy way, as most would do, or the hard way, as I did. It would have been much easier to just make a rectangular deck and stay clear of the tree, but by incorporating the tree into the deck as precisely as I did, it turns a standard deck with standard wood, into a really special feature and a beautiful spot to sit and relax, almost nestled amongst the branches and leaves.

As ever, I put a lot of thought into preparation and the things that often will never be seen, but ensure a quality result that lasts. Fortunately, days before the build I was able to be at the tree during storm force winds and note that the branches at the base barely moved millimeters, which meant I could cut and shape the decking boards really close, without risk of problems in high winds. You might notice my novel solution to a very large mature rose plant, that is widely spread throughout the canopy of the tree. It couldn’t be dug up and repositioned without cutting the many years of growth into the tree canopy, so I built a little bottomless ‘through-deck’ pot for it, which turned out to be a bit of a feature. Other small details such as sanding the tips of multiple branches that had been trimmed in the past, or the large broken branch that I cut to form a tabletop, all just come together in the details, to turn something that could have been ordinary into something special… worthy of the view.