Design project Prague, Czech Republic

A Family Garden on a Hillside, Prague

A family with a five-year-old and a university student wanted two things from one plot: a quiet Japanese garden to be on their own in, and room for a houseful of guests around a pool. The slope, cut into terraces, keeps the two apart.

The place and the brief

The house is a functionalist one, on a plot that falls steeply. The ground is heavy clay: nothing stays put on it, and nothing drains on its own.

On that slope the quiet garden and the place for guests had to sit side by side without getting in each other's way: the Japanese garden secluded, the large pool and the gazebo with a barbecue open to a full house.

What we decided

The slope became the plan. Instead of being levelled, it is cut into terraces, and the terraces do the zoning: the Japanese garden on the upper one, the pool and the lounge with the gazebo on the main level below, so the quiet and the company do not overhear each other.

Under all of it, soil improvement and drainage — on this clay, the planting depends on them more than on anything above ground. The drawings go down to retaining walls and steps, setting-out and levels, lighting and paving: what a contractor needs to price the work and build it.

How we work

Place: Prague, Czech Republic
Year: 2025
Stage: Design project
Our part: Landscape design: master plan, terraces and retaining walls, the pool, a Japanese garden, planting, drainage