The Four Seasons Garden

Opened in 2024, The Four Seasons Garden at The Newt in Somerset is a year-round horticultural showcase, designed to immerse visitors in the changing colours and textures of each season. Waterscapes were engaged by Emily Estates to deliver one of the estate’s most ambitious landscape projects, bringing together sculptural water features, advanced irrigation, and sustainable design. 

Project Overview 

The Four Seasons Garden forms part of Emily Estates, one of the most significant horticultural developments on The Newt's grounds. The garden is conceived as a journey through seasonal changes, with carefully composed planting, stone work, and water features that draw visitor attention and create focal points throughout the year.

Water plays a central role in this design strategy. The garden incorporates five distinct water features, each bringing movement, light reflection, and seasonal interest. These elements range from sculptural pools and stone troughs to moving water features and interactive splash elements, all supported by a unified circulation and filtration system.

The garden also required extensive irrigation infrastructure to maintain the health and visual quality of the planting schemes across 49 separate zones. Waterscapes designed and installed both the decorative water features and the technical systems required to keep them functioning reliably in an estate environment. The standout glass tank pond, inspired by the Babylonstoren Estate in South Africa, creates a gravity-defying display where visitors can observe fish swimming above the waterline. This effect is achieved by vacuuming air from the tank, allowing water to rise and remain suspended at the top. 

Technical & Sustainability Details

Water Features 

Five individual water features were designed and installed across the garden, each with a distinct character and purpose. These include a large sculptural newt-shaped feature and an oval-form pond, both created to draw the eye and provide focal points within the landscape. Additional elements comprise sculptural pools, moving water channels and rills, decorative spouts set into stone troughs, and a central shallow mosaic pool designed for interactive play. Each water feature was carefully positioned to connect with the surrounding stone work, plantings, and sight lines. The design ensures that movement of water, whether cascading, flowing, or contained, visually echoes the colour and texture of the stone, sculpture, and vessels themselves.  

Water Treatment & Filtration

Water circulates continuously through the features using a centralised plant room and 6,000 below ground holding tank system. All water returns to a below-ground tank before being pumped back to the features, ensuring consistent, efficient circulation. The plant space houses dedicated water treatment infrastructure: a coarse pre-filtration stage, AFM vessel filtration, UV treatment systems, and a fully automatic chemical dosing system to maintain water quality. This multi-stage approach ensures clean, clear water across all features regardless of seasonal conditions or use intensity.

Treatment levels are calibrated to the specific use of each feature. The newt-shaped feature and oval pond use plant-room-based circulation with filtration and UV treatment. Interactive water features that receive higher use employ chemical treatment alongside circulation, allowing the system to cope with greater contamination from visitors and environmental debris. The plant room itself was designed with safety and operational practicality in mind, incorporating dedicated chemical storage with ventilation, an eyewash and drench shower, and a utility sink for equipment cleaning.

Irrigation

The garden's planting schemes are supported by a sophisticated irrigation network comprising 49 separate watering zones. Water is sourced from the estate's groundwater supply, providing a sustainable resource for the gardens throughout the year. The gardens are fully irrigated using estate groundwater from a 25,000-litre underground tank.  Hidden drip lines water trees, hedges, and topiary, while lawns and seasonal beds are served by pop-up spray heads. Supplementary hydrant points provide additional flexibility for maintenance and planting outside the main garden.  A 2-wire decoder based irrigation controller manages the entire system and allows remote access for scheduling and adjustment. Individual solenoid valves at each zone provide granular control, allowing tuning of water delivery to suit different plant types, soil conditions, and seasonal demands. The system incorporates weather-reactive technology that automatically adjusts irrigation schedules based on rainfall and temperature, optimising water use and plant health while minimising waste.

Water Resource Management & Control

Water management is central to the project’s design. A dedicated central control panel monitors all water infrastructure across the site. Non-contact ultrasonic water level sensors in each underground tank, were chosen for their reliability in the site’s high-calcium water conditions providing early warning of any system faults or maintenance needs. Within the plant room a dedicated central control panel monitors and controls the water replenishment to each underground tank and the newt pond. This panel provides the client with invaluable water volume information. Every aspect of water quality and circulation is controlled from a remote access control panel allowing the estate team to monitor system health and respond to issues without being physically present at the site. This infrastructure makes the garden manageable for long-term operation while maintaining the reliability and visual quality that the project demands.

Design & Collaboration 

The project brought together a skilled team of designers and craftspeople. The sculptural pools and water spouts were designed by The Newt in Somerset's in-house estate architect, ensuring seamless integration with the garden's overall aesthetic and spatial composition. Several water features were created by repurposing historic stone vessels sourced from the estate, bringing recycled materials and heritage character into the contemporary design. Metal spouts and water delivery elements were manufactured by local metalworking specialists, supporting the regional economy and allowing for detailed, site-specific customisation. Emily Estates provided landscape architecture oversight and project management, coordinating the work with The Newt's in-house construction teams and ensuring that the water systems integrated smoothly with hardscaping, planting, and wider estate operations.

Results & Outcomes 

The Four Seasons Garden now functions as a cohesive, year-round visitor experience. The five water features work together to create a sense of movement and seasonal transformation, inviting exploration and providing multiple focal points across the landscape. The integrated approach to water management, combining decorative features, circulation systems, multi-stage filtration, and automated irrigation, ensures that the garden can be maintained reliably by the estate team. The system has been designed to be robust, efficient, and responsive to seasonal variations in weather and use.