Project Maxpro: the garden seen from above, the house at the top, a pool and timber deck at its foot, a pergola to one side and a parking court behind the street wall.

Project Maxpro

Oyarifa · 2026

1,125 square metres at Oyarifa, with a road along the front and another down the left side. The other two boundaries are buildings — neighbours to the right and at the back.

A house was already standing on it. We modified that, and took the interiors and the landscape in full.

Two of the four boundaries are roads, so two needed screening and two already had it. That did more to set the plan than anything else. Parking and the wall take the road edges, the pool and deck sit in the middle where no neighbour looks into them, and the planting works hardest along the two open sides.

Location
Oyarifa, Greater Accra, Ghana
Client
Bismark Osei Bimpong
Disciplines
Landscape, Architecture, Interiors
Role
Building modification, landscape and interiors
Site area
1,125 m²
Status
Built 2026
The house from the paved forecourt: two storeys in white render, a recessed entrance with steps up to it and a balcony over, columns carrying a canopy to the left, lawn beyond and bird-of-paradise planting to the right.
The house from the forecourt.
The parking court: cars against a low wall, palms and bougainvillea along the boundary behind them, a large tree at the centre, and bird-of-paradise planting in the foreground.
The parking court, on one of the two road edges.
The pool and timber deck, with a pergola at the far end and planting along the wall.
The pool and deck, pergola at the far end. They sit in the middle of the plot, where no neighbour looks into them.

What to notice

Nothing in the schedule is deciduous. A screen along a road that thins in the harmattan fails in exactly the months you notice it, and that is decided at specification or not at all.

From the deck, the planted edge is the view. All the flowering in the garden is in that edge, so the planting that keeps the road out is the same planting that gives the garden its colour. This is written up in full in the note Nothing in the schedule is deciduous.

The whole plot from directly above: the tiled roof of the house at the top right, a parking court with four cars at the left, the pool and timber deck in the middle, lawn at the top left, and planting beds with palms along every boundary.
The plot from directly above — the house and its roof at the top, the parking court to the left, pool and deck in the middle.
Landscape plan: the house and terraces at the top, the pool and deck below them, a parking court of four bays behind the street wall, and planting beds and tree canopies along every boundary. Full size
The same arrangement drawn. Four parking bays behind the street wall, and planting beds along every boundary.
Planting schedule listing quantity, category, Latin name and common name for seven species: Terminalia mantaly, Bougainvillea, Agapanthus Cloudy Days, Liriope muscari, Strelitzia reginae, Dypsis lutescens and Rhapis excelsa. Full size
The planting schedule: 86 plants across seven species, arranged by height rather than by variety. Two Terminalia mantaly stand over the lawn for shade. The boundary builds up from thirty Liriope muscari and eleven Agapanthus at the ground line, through eighteen Strelitzia reginae at about chest height and ten bougainvillea on the walls, to fifteen palms at the top: eleven Rhapis excelsa and four Dypsis lutescens, chosen because they clump to the ground rather than running up to a bare trunk.
The kitchen: grey-fronted units in a U under a recessed ceiling panel, an extractor over the hob, a window above the sink and timber doors on both sides.
The kitchen: grey-fronted units in a U under a recessed ceiling panel.
The bedroom from the far corner: the bed against a dark accent wall, full-height curtains across two windows with a split air conditioner centred between them, a wall shelf on the near wall, a reading lamp on one bedside table and a white cabinet on the other.
The bedroom. The bed sits against the one dark wall in the room, with the curtains running full height across both windows either side of it.

Where this stops being true

The colour runs warm to cool as it steps down toward the viewer: bougainvillea on the wall, orange Strelitzia in front of it, blue Agapanthus below that, green Liriope at the ground. That run and the stepped heights are a maintained condition rather than a built one. They hold for as long as someone keeps the Strelitzia out of the Agapanthus and cuts the bougainvillea back off the wall.

Planting is the only material on a site that goes on changing shape after handover. The first two seasons are the exposed ones: none of this reaches the height it is drawn at without water and weeding the rain will not supply on its own.