Garden Designer Visit: The Precocious Genius of Luciano Giubbilei in London - Gardenista
Photographs courtesy of Luciano Giubbilei. Born in 1971 designer Luciano Giubbilei wasn t even 30 years old when he began to create a modern... ...sharp edged garden on an awkwardly shaped property in The Boltons an exclusive enclave of Victorian townhouses near Kensington Palace This is not a low-maintenance garden. Yew cubes that stand at attention along the length of the garden are kept precisely clipped. Photograph by Andrew Twort. Texture and scale are two primary considerations in a garden where color is not part of the palette. “Originally an awkward and angular site, the garden was carefully carved into a series of different entertaining and green spaces,” says Giubbilei. Wide steps of Portland stone (a porous limestone common in London) connect the garden to a sunken terrace laid in a stacked bond pattern. The precise geometry of the plantings and the sharp right angles of paths mask the fact that the lot is irregularly shaped and create an optical illusion that the garden is a perfectly proportioned rectangle. A limestone gravel path runs alongside evergreen shrubs that lend year-round structure and interest to the garden.