Create a Bridgerton Style Garden Fit For A Ball

If you have Netflix you may have been glued to their Regency drama Bridgerton.  This racy romance is not for the faint hearted, but behind the steamy bodice ripping, check out the garden ornaments! Yes, garden ornaments! And the houses have pretty impressive stonework both inside and out! The garden ball hosted by the Duke and Duchess of Hastings is bursting with Regency features, so is Queen Charlotte’s palace and garden and every garden! They are all decorated with stone treasures! Here’s our guide to bringing a bit of Bridgerton style to your home. Now is the time to get ready for when we can finally invite people over for a ball! Or even a stylish soiree of six!

Glorious Gate Piers

Traditionally gate piers are for, well – gates! But they don’t have to just be a supporting role. We can make them hollow to fit electrical cables allowing you to add lights on the top. This is an effective and dramatic way to illuminate your garden or driveway.

Lady Danbury looks dramatic. Photo credit: Netflix

Bridgerton takes this concept further. Gate piers with lights are used as posts to support railings in place of fencing or balustrade, with a pair of pier capitals as a “doorway” to the rest of the well landscaped garden. This creates a beautifully lit ambiance for any garden party. Imagine it at Christmas, wrapped in twinkling fairy lights – magical!

You could also plant clematis, roses and jasmine to wrap around the stone to soften the look and add wonderfully fragrant flowers.

Dancing, lit by gate piers. Photo credit: Netflix.

If you don’t want to light up your gate piers, you can add smart tops with finials or statues to make them into a beautiful feature.

Chilstone ball finial and gate pier.

Urns for Fashionably Formal Gardens

Flowers tumble from urns and tazzas everywhere you look in this series. Even a bridge is decorated with opulently planted urns. These versatile planters can be placed throughout your garden on walls, pedestals, columns or gate piers to draw the eye to sections of your garden. They also increase the number of vessels to plant more blooms!

Lord Hastings isn’t the only beauty when you have so many plants in fabulous urns. Seriously, talented gardeners! Photo credit: Netflix

You can transform a garden wall with decorative urns that look beautiful glinting with frost in winter and cascade with petunias, and campanula in summer.

The Riverhill Himalayan Gardens in Sevenoaks made a glorious feature along a large wall, adding multiple urns on top of stone coping. It looks rather grand and you can design a planting scheme as opulent as your budget, style or gardening time allows. Bulbs and perennials will flower year after year, creating interest all year round.

Chilstone urns when they were newly installed at the Riverhill Himalayan Gardens in Sevenoaks, Kent

The Bridgerton family house has two tazza style urns either side of the front entrance, on top of their wall coping. This softens the stone coping and adds a place for bold, plant displays for maximum impact! This is a perfect for gardeners who like to fill every available space with blooms.

The Bridgerton house is designed to make a huge statement to their neighbours. With a pair of urns to show off the skills of their gardener. Photo credit: Netflix

This style of planter has a wider diameter that allows plenty of room for bedding plants and looks wonderful with blooms cascading over the edges.

Chilstone make a number of Tazza style urns in a range of sizes to suit your planting space.

If you like dramatic ornaments but lack gardening time, try lidded urns to provide structure and style. Urns on pedestals look dramatic alone or in an arc on a driveway, guiding visitors towards an impressive entrance.  You can even engrave them, or use them to intern the ashes of loved ones. There really aren’t any rules. Use your imagination to create the right features for your home.

Chilstone’s Longleat urn creates a beautiful focal point and is even more dramatic in a series of pairs along driveways.

A Garden Bench or Six for The Season’s Soirees

When creating a Bridgeton inspired  garden, don’t forget that a lady needs to rest between dances. A stone bench or six (like Queen Charlotte has) are needed to guarantee your garden party is perfect for scoping out society. You can even have it engraved for extra charm! Add some cushions to make your guests feel relaxed and welcome and enjoy some champagne in the sunshine.

We have a wide range of benches from Regency to contemporary styles.

Whether you have the perfect spot to take in an impressive view or a compact courtyard for urban entertaining we can create the right stone bench to last for season after season. For swooning, marriage proposals or just to enjoy the garden.

Our benches are available in range of sizes.

We can even make fancy legs to make your garden seating the real talking point of your garden party! Mix and match our components to get the right fit, or create a blend of Regency meets contemporary to match the Bridgerton soundtrack!  If 2020 pop hits work with Regency Strings, why not?

Curved benches fit well in corners, follies and make a focal point around a patio

A Steamy Folly Fit for a Rain-Soaked Duke (gasp!)

Spoiler alert! The Duke in action. Photo credit: Netflix.

The folly in Bridgerton is part of a racy, rain-soaked scene. While we can’t promise passion, we can create some beautifully crafted garden pavilions, square, or domed. We can even supply it with an open or wrought iron roof so you can get totally drenched if you like!

Chilstone can create a folly to match your style.

Our garden pavilions add romance to your landscape. They are perfect places to admire a vista at sunset and they even double up as a bandstand once we can have parties and big, summer weddings again! They do take some planning and are tailored to your space, so while many people have time to spare in lock down, feel free to call our experienced team to advise you. We can create an unique folly on request, just ask.

These work well in private gardens, hotels, wedding venues and stately grounds.

Chilstone’s Ionic Temple at The Spa Hotel in Tunbridge Wells is licenced to hold wedding ceremonies outside.

A Fabulous Fountain to Feature at your Garden Ball

What does every dance floor need? Why, a fountain of course! For the ultimate in flamboyance you need a fountain, darling!  Even the when the guests have gone home, a water feature is the perfect place to relax and reflect on the events of the night before, whether you are pondering a proposal or figuring out just who Lady Whistledown is.

The Duke and Duchess of Hastings host a ball. Photo credit: Netflix.

Water features work well  in orangeries or in quiet courtyard corners too. No matter how grand or petite your space is we can find something just right.

If you have a large space, why not go all in? By adding classical garden ornaments you can recreate a stately landscape with the right planting and an impressive fountain, the ultimate traditional English garden!

A Chilstone Fountain can have as many tiers as you desire or mix and match components to get the look you want.

If a large pond and fountain is beyond your capacity, you don’t have to rule out having a water feature. We can customise ball finials, statues and planters for smaller water features. You can still make a big statement, you don’t have to marry a duke or a viscount to have a gorgeous garden feature. Even the Modiste and Soprano can have their dream garden!

We can customise statues, ball finials and planters too for smaller water features.

Balustrades Fit for Bridgertons

Balustrade isn’t limited to gardens for debutantes to glide past, they are an integral part of the Bridgerton house. Above the tumbling wisteria there is a rooftop balustrade, a decadent addition to the exterior of their well-healed family home. The feature windows are framed with statement stonework and it doesn’t end there! With matching urns on pedestals to frame front door and portico and large iron gates swathed in pink roses, this house is the epitome of grandeur and elegance. This style doesn’t have to stay in the past, we can replicate stone work to add period features to new or extended houses.

The impressive family house! Photo credit: Netflix

We are often asked to add a smart portico to properties to bring an entrance to life, making it a real feature. Our columns are made in complete sections to avoid ugly horizontal join lines spoiling our elegant columns.

Chilstone portico and planters make elegant features around entrances.

Of course balustrades aren’t just for property fronts, they look wonderful in gardens too. Make a feature along patios, stone steps and around swimming pools! Just because your garden theme is Regency doesn’t mean you can’t add modern luxury!

Mix the best of modern and historical adding stone features and balustrade.

Ask our Team

Are you feeling inspired to add all of the above and a fountain? The Duchess of Hastings did, along with a checkerboard dance floor! In this period drama series more is more!

If you need help to get your garden and property ready for the ultimate garden party to end the season, ask our team. Our phone lines are open seven days a week. We can hand make it now, ready to show it off when Covid is distant memory and we can dance the night away once more.

Stay safe.

Chilstone Harewood Jardiniere in a garden designed by Kate Ball.