Apollo garden - An Outdoor Entertaining Space That is Out of This World
A Multi-Award-Winning Masterpiece Featuring Millboard Enhanced Grain Decking in Smoked Oak
| Location | Essex |
|---|---|
| Designer | Designscape |
| Landscaper | Landscapes by Design |
A GARDEN THAT REACHES FOR THE STARS
The name Apollo is not arbitrary. Positioned at the heart of this extraordinary garden is a stainless steel space capsule built to the same scale as the Apollo 11 command module, a Timothy Oulton piece with a plush, padded interior, a table, and a chandelier suspended overhead. It sits behind the TV screen as a hidden feature: a dramatic reveal that sets the tone for a project where no detail was too ambitious to consider.
The Apollo Garden is the result of a close collaboration between garden designer Paul Newman of Designscape and Stuart Reid of Landscapes by Design, a partnership that combined creative vision with 25 years of craft and construction expertise. Specified throughout the project, Millboard Enhanced Grain decking in Smoked Oak provides the surface that ties every zone of this complex scheme together. That combination proved formidable. At the APL Annual Awards on 14th March 2025 at The Brewery in London, Apollo took home multiple category wins before being crowned Supreme Winner, the highest accolade in the UK landscaping calendar, and a remarkable achievement in the APL’s milestone 30th anniversary year.
“We just built it to the same high specification and technique and attention that we do all our gardens,” said Stuart Reid. The judges clearly agreed.
THE BRIEF: AN OUTDOOR DESTINATION
The client, a longstanding friend of Stuart Reid’s, came to the project with a clear ambition: a luxury entertainment space that would function as a complete destination in its own right. Paul Newman developed the design, and when the client spotted the Timothy Oulton capsule in a London studio, he asked whether it could be incorporated. Stuart Reid didn’t hesitate. The garden was subsequently built around it.
What Designscape and Landscapes by Design delivered is structured around a dramatic sunken lounge area, the centrepiece of the scheme, with generous seating arranged around a central fire table. A hot tub sits to one side. A sleek bar with its own seating anchors one edge of the space, paired with a large high-definition screen for live sport or outdoor cinema evenings. Soft lantern lighting threads through the garden, shifting its character as day turns to evening and giving the space an intimacy that rewards spending time in it.
BUILT TO AN EXACTING STANDARD
Delivering Apollo required considerably more than design flair. Landscapes by Design faced significant technical challenges on site: managing drainage through a large soakaway, moving a substantial volume of soil to create the sunken seating area, and executing a high volume of intricate stonework. The majority of the stone was mitred or bull-nosed by hand, on site. At peak, twelve people were working simultaneously, from electricians to structural engineers.
“It was technically challenging, but we had a great client,” Stuart Reid noted. That trust between client and contractor is evident in the finished result: a garden where the complexity of the construction is entirely invisible, and the experience of being in the space takes precedence over everything else.
Specifying the right surface
For a project of this ambition, the decking surface needed to perform across several distinct zones, including the sunken lounge, hot tub surround, bar area, and step transitions, while holding together visually as a single, composed scheme. Paul Newman specified Millboard Enhanced Grain decking in Smoked Oak throughout.
Smoked Oak was the right choice for this garden. Its soft grey tone, with the warmer undertones of seasoned hardwood, provided a foundation that was contemporary without being stark, and refined without competing with the features around it. Against the glow of the fire table and lantern lighting after dark, the boards take on a perceptible warmth, a quality that comes from the hand-colouring process, which recreates the natural tonal variation of real timber across every board.
Millboard Enhanced Grain decking is moulded from selected smooth timber masters and finished by hand to replicate the intricate grain detail and beauty of real wood. Across the full expanse of a garden like Apollo, that attention to surface detail translates into a material that reads as quietly luxurious rather than obviously engineered, exactly the aesthetic that the design required.
Performance across every level
A garden designed for year-round entertaining needs a surface that earns its place in every season. The Lastane surface coating provides exceptional slip resistance even when wet, a non-negotiable requirement around a hot tub and in a garden intended for evening use and after rainfall. The hidden Durafix fixing system keeps the surface visually uninterrupted throughout, with no exposed fixings or break in the surface plane, just a clean finish that sits calmly beneath everything else happening in the space.
The boards are produced from a unique resin-mineral composite, entirely wood-free, which means they will not rot, warp, splinter, or absorb moisture regardless of the season. With a 25-year residential warranty, the specification reflects the long-term confidence that a garden of this scale demands. Once installed, the surface asks almost nothing of the people using it, which is precisely the point.
recognised at the highest level
The APL (Association of Professional Landscapers) Awards are widely regarded as the benchmark for professional landscaping excellence in the UK. Apollo did not simply win a category; it won several before being elevated to Supreme Winner across the entire field. APL General Manager Phil Tremayne described it as “a truly remarkable project,” adding that the competition in 2025 had been the strongest the awards had seen.
For Stuart Reid and the Landscapes by Design team, the recognition was both a validation of their craft and something of a surprise. “Sometimes I still feel like we’re this little landscaping company from Essex that no-one knows,” Stuart Reid reflected. That modesty, combined with the evidence of Apollo itself, makes the Supreme Award all the more fitting.
what apollo demonstrates
Apollo is the product of a genuine creative and technical partnership. Paul Newman’s design gave the project its character and coherence; Stuart Reid and Landscapes by Design gave it its precision and permanence. The specification of Millboard Enhanced Grain decking in Smoked Oak gave both teams a surface they could rely on, one that would hold the scheme together visually, perform without compromise in a demanding environment, and do so without ever drawing attention to itself.
For designers and landscapers working at this level, that kind of quiet confidence in a material matters. It is the foundation on which everything else is built.
in summary
Project: The Apollo Garden
Design: Paul Newman, Designscape
Build: Stuart Reid, Landscapes by Design
Millboard Specification: Enhanced Grain Decking, Smoked Oak
Award: APL Supreme Award 2025 (multiple category wins)
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