Norton House Hotel

The challenge was to provide a new corporate and leisure pavilion and 36 new bedrooms within the curtilage of a sensitive B-Listed property and walled garden situated in Edinburgh's Green Belt.  As the walled garden had suffered over the years from lack of a defined role, we offered it a new pivotal function within the proposals - enhancing the hotel’s facilities within a discreet setting, whilst introducing a striking, modern addition to its landscape and gardens.  The new orchard, water garden, terraces, ‘green roof’ and lawns that were provided, when combined with the new structures in the walled garden, blurred the boundaries between internal and the external spaces that formed part of a new rainwater harvesting strategy linked to a grey water treatment system.

This new landscape strategy accommodates a modern representation of the traditional walled garden glasshouse to provide modern, flexible and functional corporate facilities.  The walled garden is approached through an existing opening in the south wall and the entrance threshold is accentuated by the first of two over-sailing wood-lined canopies, an open structure to provide shelter and a defined entrance to the garden and new below-garden level.  From there the new garden opens onto a southern orchard and a west-facing terrace, providing an approach to the second over-sailing canopy along the north wall and accommodating the new corporate pavilion.