GARDEN DESIGN & BUILD

A lot of garden design is sold as a drawing. You pay for a beautiful plan, and then you find a builder, and then you find out what it actually costs — frequently double what you had in mind, because nobody costing the drawing had to dig it.

We do it the other way round. Connor sketches on site, at the first visit, in front of you. The design develops with the price attached to it, because the person drawing it is the person who will be standing in the hole.

The first visit

Free, about an hour, and more useful than it sounds. We walk the garden and talk about how you actually use it — where the sun is at six in the evening, whether there are children or a dog, whether you want to grow things or never think about it again, what you hate about it now. Then we take measurements and levels and sketch a rough layout on the spot.

You get a detailed written quotation within 48 hours, itemised, so you can see what the patio costs against what the walling costs and decide what to do now and what to leave for next year.

What we think about

Levels

The single biggest thing in most gardens round here, and the one most often ducked. A sloping garden that is terraced into two or three usable spaces is transformed; the same garden with a patio squeezed in at the top and a bank of grass below is not. Terracing means retaining walls, and retaining walls are proper construction — foundations, drainage behind, the lot.

Where the sun actually is

People put the patio outside the back door because that is where the door is. Often the sun at the time you would actually sit outside is at the far end. Moving the seating area is free at the design stage and impossible afterwards.

Drainage

Every hard surface you add is water that used to soak in and now has to go somewhere. On the clay at the bottom of the valleys this is the difference between a garden that works and a garden that is a bog from November.

What the ground is

Chalk on the higher ground, clay in the valleys, flint throughout. It decides what will grow, how deep the footings go and how long the digging takes. Planting chosen for the wrong soil dies expensively.

The trees

What is worth keeping, what is going to be a problem in ten years, what is protected. A mature tree is the one thing in a garden you cannot buy back, so it gets decided deliberately rather than by whoever is on the digger.

Maintenance, honestly

There is no point designing something that needs a day a week if you have got an hour a month. We would rather build you a garden you can keep on top of.

Why design and build together

• The price is real from the start, because it is priced by the people doing it
• Nothing gets lost in translation between a designer’s drawing and a builder’s interpretation of it
• The tree work is in-house. Most landscapers subcontract it. Connor is an NPTC-qualified arborist, so removals, reductions and root protection are designed in rather than bolted on
• One team, one point of contact and one person responsible when something needs sorting

We are open about the exception: for large planting schemes we bring in a specialist planting contractor, because they are better at it than we are. The clearing, groundwork, walling and hard landscaping are ours.

In stages, if that suits

A whole garden in one go is not the only option. Plenty of people do the clearance and the terrace this year and the lawn and planting next. Because the design covers the whole garden, the drainage and levels are right for what comes later — which is the thing that goes wrong when gardens are done piecemeal without a plan.

How we work

• Free site visit. We walk the garden with you, talk it through, sketch a rough plan on the spot and take measurements
• Detailed written quotation within 48 hours. Itemised, so you can see what each part costs and leave out anything you’d rather not do yet
• We build it on agreed dates, with our own team doing the clearing, groundwork and construction
• Everything goes. We’re licensed waste carriers, so the spoil and arisings leave legally and the paperwork exists

We don’t put prices on the website. The same job on a flat plot with a drive to the back, and on a sloping garden you can only reach through the house, are genuinely different jobs — any figure here would be a guess. The visit is free and gets you a real number.

Related work

Common questions

QUESTIONS WE GET ASKED

Do you charge for the design?

Not for the initial visit and the sketch layout — that comes with the quotation, free. Where a garden needs full scale drawings and a detailed planting plan, that is a piece of work in its own right and we will tell you what it costs before we do it, never afterwards.

Can I use your design and have someone else build it?

You can, but it is not really what we do — the design is worked out around how we build. If you want a drawing to take to tender, an independent garden designer is a better fit and we will say so.

How long does a whole garden take?

A modest garden, two to three weeks. A large one with terracing, walls, a new drive and planting, six weeks or more. Ground conditions and weather move it, and we tell you as soon as we know rather than at the end of the week.

Can we do it in stages to spread the cost?

Yes, and a lot of people do. The important thing is that the whole garden is designed first, even if only part gets built — so the levels and drainage are right for what comes later. Doing it in bits without a plan is how you end up digging up the patio to run a drain.

Do you do the planting as well?

The clearing, groundwork, walling and hard landscaping are all our own team. For larger planting schemes we bring in a specialist planting contractor who is better at it than we are. We would rather tell you that than pretend otherwise.

Will you tell me if my idea is a bad one?

Yes. Politely, but yes. If the patio is going in the shade, or the retaining wall you have seen online will not hold that bank, or the grass will never grow under that beech, it is far cheaper to hear it at the sketch stage than after it is built.