What is the most appropriate way to address placing a relatively large house on a small plot at a reasonably high density and yet aspiring to the Garden City ideal? Our answer, Hedge Home, completely wraps the house in its own garden with planted green roofs and walls.  The house sits on the site like a clipped topiary bush; in association with neighbours, it forms a giant hedgerow. Within its living green framework, Hedge Home comprises a flexible, informal family home with four double bedrooms over three floors.

Hedge Home has direct connections to usable external spaces from every room on all floors, using these for environmental control, biodiversity, improving occupant health, and social contact. Our proposal is an energy-efficient fabric-first approach with living walls, providing solar shading, reducing overheating in the summer, increasing privacy and encouraging beneficial wildlife, including pollinating insects. The plants chosen will relate to the orientation of each house. As well as accessible terraces, there are fully planted roof areas designed as intensive bio-diverse garden areas plus a low maintenance brown roof to the upper roof. Along with a permeably paved driveway and path, the green roofs slow down rainfall run-off, reducing the pressure on drains. Birds and bats are encouraged and accommodated in the nesting/roosting boxes incorporated within the thick planted walls.