Dan Cox (@thehitchcockhouse), winner of Best Garden Makeover in House Beautiful's Real Style Awards 2026, has transformed a compact outdoor space into a jaw-droppingly glamorous retreat inspired by a Moroccan rooftop bar.
We featured Dan's garden in House Beautiful last year, and since then, we’ve visited it regularly… in our home decor daydreams. Despite the plot’s compact dimensions, Dan and his partner Nick squeezed in a chequerboard terrace, clear zoning, an outdoor kitchen and sultry lighting – although, as you’ll hear, the road to garden nirvana wasn’t all smooth.
What’s your decorating style in three words?
Bold, playful and characterful.
What was the best lesson you learned about renovating the garden?
Definitely patience. Planting needs time to establish and mature. All our favourite gardens that we used for inspiration had beautiful mature plants – it would have cost us thousands to buy them like this, so our budget forced us to grow our plants from infancy. It took a couple of years for our garden to look as we wanted, but we’re so happy with the planting choices we’ve made.
What garden makeover advice would you share?
Design the structure first. I actually mapped out our garden design using Microsoft Paint and Excel, though I’m sure there are much better online tools available. Having a clear design for the patio, decking and outdoor kitchen really helped. Once the bones are right, you can layer in greenery etc.
What was the biggest challenge you faced?
Trying to squeeze everything we wanted into a pretty small space! The garden is about 10m x 5m. We prioritised entertaining so we – perhaps controversially – removed the grass in favour of a chequerboard patio. We squeezed a pergola-covered dining area in an awkward corner and then installed an outdoor kitchen. To compensate for the lost lawn, we went heavy on the planting, including five trees.
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Did you have any DIY disasters?
Yes, with the outdoor kitchen. It’s our first house so we were pretty inexperienced with DIY. I ended up breaking my hand building the outdoor kitchen, using power tools I probably should have had some training to use. Nick's dad, Denis, came to save the day and finished it for us! We live and learn.
What stage of decorating do you dread? Which makes you do a happy dance?
My least favourite stage is saving up the money! When you have so many ideas but don’t have the funds to execute them, it can be so frustrating. My favourite part is seeing people enjoying the space. When we’re hosting a BBQ with our mates, it feels so good to see it being used as we hoped it would be.
What’s a surprising hack you discovered during this project?
Lighting makes such a huge difference. We’ve got six Phillips hue lights and countless solar lights. At night they automatically turn on and it makes the garden look incredible, even through winter.
What does ‘home’ mean to you?
Home is somewhere that feels personal. My partner Nick and I always wanted our home to reflect our personalities – being sympathetic to the character of our period home, adding warmth and creating somewhere that feels lived-in rather than overly styled. Our design choices are focused on what we want to do, rather than thinking about re-sale potential. With the garden, we wanted it to feel aligned to the decor choices inside the house, so we’ve still incorporated bold colour on the woodwork and furniture, plus loads of comfortable seating which is great for summer entertaining.
