Casa Del Sogno Villa
Anjuna, Goa
Frontage and poolside beds for a private villa, planted to read at dusk under the house lighting.
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Villas, homes and private gardens
Villa garden design in Goa
Private gardens, courtyards and pool surrounds, planted for the climate they actually sit in. Bali gardens are our specialisation, and they suit Goa for a practical reason: the plants that style uses are the ones that thrive here anyway.
Villa
Parra, Goa
Aqua scaping — a rock water feature set into the garden, with ground cover run up to the stone.
Diaz
Goa
Terraced beds built against laterite walls, with flowering stock carrying the length of the run.
What the job involves
Villa and private garden design.
Design, planting, water features and upkeep for private villas, second homes and courtyards across Goa.
A garden you sit in
The Bali approach is about enclosure and layering — canopy, mid-storey and ground cover all present at once, so the space reads as a room rather than a lawn with beds round the edge.
Planted to read at dusk
Most people use a villa garden in the evening. Form and foliage carry after dark where flower colour does not, and lighting is planned with the beds rather than retrofitted into them.
Pool surrounds
Planting near water has to cope with splash, chlorine and reflected heat, and it must not drop constantly into the pool. That rules out several of the obvious choices.
Laterite walls
The strip beside a Goan stone wall is hotter, drier and shallower than the rest of the garden. We terrace and plant it accordingly, rather than planting the wall itself.
For a house that is empty half the year
A second home cannot carry a scheme that needs daily attention. Where you are away for months we plan for that openly instead of handing over a garden that will not survive your absence.
Or just come to the studio
Not every garden needs a project. You are welcome to come to the studio in Anjuna and buy plants, planters, compost or a fountain, and ask about what will work where you live.
Questions
The things people ask.
Do you take on small gardens, or only large villas?
Both. A courtyard or a side return is often easier to do well than a large open plot, because the walls already give you the enclosure that the planting style depends on.
We are only in Goa for part of the year. Is that a problem?
It changes the design rather than ruling it out. A scheme that needs daily watering will not survive an absent owner, so the plant choice, the irrigation and the maintenance arrangement all have to assume you are away.
What is a Bali garden, exactly?
A layered tropical style — heavy foliage, stone, water and lighting used together, kept mostly green with flower as punctuation. It is our stated specialisation. It depends far more on density and enclosure than on any particular plant list.
Can you add water to an existing garden?
Usually. A lily pond needs depth, shade and heavy planting to stay clear; where a site cannot give it those, a rock water feature with moving water gives you the sound and the cooling with much less upkeep and it does not turn green.
Do you maintain the garden afterwards?
Yes, and tropical planting needs it more than people expect. Four months of hard growth a year will close a layered scheme into a single mass if nobody thins it.
Where do the plants come from?
Our own nurseries at Sangolda and Vagator. Stock raised in Goa has already been through the monsoon and the dry season here, which is the single biggest factor in whether a plant establishes.
Enquiries
Tell us about the space.
A new garden, a courtyard, a pool surround, or one that has got away from you since the last monsoon. Tell us where it is and how you use it, and we will tell you what is realistic.
[email protected]From the journal
Worth reading first.
monsoon
What actually survives a Goan monsoon
Four months of rain, then eight of heat and salt. Why gardens in Goa fail in October rather than in June, and what to plant so yours does not.
trees
Moving a mature tree instead of losing it
On the Noah site we lifted established trees and put them back rather than clearing them. What that takes, what it costs you in time, and when it will not work.
water
A lily pond is a system, not a feature
Water is the thing guests photograph and the thing that goes wrong first. What a pond in Goa needs to stay clear, and what we build in to keep it there.