Blog

Quick Answer To design your own garden you need a handful of affordable drawing tools and measuring equipment. The essentials are A3 graph paper, tracing paper, a 10m tape measure, a compass and quality pencils. A lightbox and pop-up easel make the process considerably more comfortable, and coloured pencils or watercolours let you bring your […]

Today, I’m giving you the exact template I use on private clients’ work and BBC Garden Rescue, completely free. This is not a tick box exercise, but a systematic ‘logical’ approach to understanding what you need from your garden. It helps demystify where to start with any garden design. Showing what’s possible within your constraints, […]

This guide is the one I wish had existed when I started out. Whether you are kitting out a new garden from scratch, replacing worn-out tools, or looking for gift ideas that a gardener will actually use, this is my honest, experience-led view of the best garden tools available in the UK in 2026. No […]

If you think you’ve got a black thumb when it comes to houseplants, I’ve got brilliant news for you. There are loads of absolutely gorgeous indoor plants that are practically impossible to kill, even if you’re a complete beginner. I want to show you my tried and tested beginner bulletproof house plants, even if you’ve […]

Growing a wisteria in your garden can be one of the most impressive plants to welcome you home. In summer, wisteria has jaw-dropping, pendulous (raceme) lilac flowers that hang like purple pendants. These climbing giants can add a green, vertical layer of gardening to your home. Whether around a door to soften an entrance, grown […]

Quick Answer The fastest growing plants for UK gardens include flowering shrubs such as Buddleja, Lavatera, Forsythia, and Photinia ‘Red Robin’, which can add 60cm to 1.5m per year. For ground cover, Vinca, Ajuga, and Geranium macrorrhizum spread rapidly with minimal effort. Fast-growing small trees including Amelanchier lamarckii, Sorbus aucuparia (Rowan), and Prunus ‘Amanogawa’ deliver […]

Quick Answer Prune most hydrangeas in late winter to early spring, ideally March in the UK, once the worst frosts have passed and you can see fresh buds emerging. Remove spent flower heads, cut back a quarter of the oldest stems to the ground, and trim remaining stems to an outward-facing bud. Climbing hydrangeas are […]

Many of the plants that define the classic English country garden style thrive specifically because of alkaline conditions, meaning that if you live in a very chalky garden, there are plenty of plants to choose from. Trust me, as the garden design expert, having all kinds of soil still lets you have flower beds full […]

From designing hundreds of client gardens across the UK, I can tell you that the gardeners who stop fighting their soil and start choosing plants that genuinely love it are the ones who achieve the most spectacular results. Acid soil is home territory for some of the most beautiful plants in cultivation. In this guide […]

These are plants with stories woven through Anglo-Saxon charms, Druid ritual, Tudor love spells, and the extraordinary tradition of floromancy, the art of reading the future in petals and blooms. What I love about this as a garden designer is that every single one of these plants earns its place on pure horticultural merit. They […]