Aaron Marubbi

Ogwen Valley - Snowdonia

Best Beautiful Border Award

Designed by: Aaron Marubbi

This border is a celebration of the designer’s home; the Ogwen Valley, Snowdonia. It incorporates two main elements of the valley landscape; slate crawiau and a slate ribbon that represents the flowing river Ogwen itself.

‘Crawiau’ is a very specific type of field boundary in Snowdonia and is particular to the Ogwen valley. Slates of about 1200-1500mm high, 100-400mm wide are set upright into the ground leaving about 800-900mm showing above ground. Steel wire is then used to thread them together along their tops for stability. They line pastural fields to keep livestock safe and secure. They are striking elements of the landscape and beautiful. I want to show them off as the main focal point of the border.

The borders crawiau will start off as slates in the ground (as it is found in the valley in the Penrhyn Quarry) and will slowly raise up in a curve to represent man’s impact on the landscape of the valley, literally moving whole mountains of slate to roof the world. Until they are upright and make a protective curve around a statement multi-stem tree.

Planting will be naturalistic with lots of natives incorporated into the scheme. Because the slate crawiau are all different angles there will be pockets of shade and light which will allow me to plant both sun-loving heath/meadow areas as well as some shadier patches for ferns, Luzula. All representative of the local heath/woodland edge habitats.