Garden Design Styles

Cottage gardens are becoming more popular in urban gardens as they are a magnet for wildlife. Cottage gardens are also suited well for small built-up spaces as they make the absolute most of the growing space both in the ground and with vertical planting. If you’re interested in cottage gardens and want to know if […]

🌿 Quick Answer To design a front garden, start by surveying your space for sunlight, soil type, and size. Define whether you need parking, privacy, or planting as your priority. Choose a style — cottage, formal, or low maintenance — then sketch a layout balancing hard landscaping with at least one third planting. Select layered […]

Standing at your patio doors staring out at that wedge of green space narrowing away into a sharp point, you might be wondering what possessed the original planner to carve up gardens into geometric nightmares. Triangle shaped gardens are one of those design challenges that can make even experienced gardeners throw their hands up in […]

Staring out at your perfectly square garden through those patio doors, you might be feeling distinctly uninspired. That predictable rectangle of lumpy turf bordered by fence panels on all sides probably looks less like a garden and more like a green prison yard, especially if it’s one of those typical new build plots where developers […]

“Can AI Be Used to Design My Garden?” I get asked this question almost weekly now. Someone’s uploaded a photo of their sad patch of lawn to an AI garden planner, pressed a few buttons, and suddenly they’re staring at a rendered image of what looks like the Chelsea Flower Show has landed in their […]

Staring down that narrow strip of garden stretching away from your house, you might be feeling like you’ve drawn the short straw in the garden lottery. Long thin gardens are probably the most common awkward shape in British suburbia, particularly in Victorian terraces, post-war developments, and those estate properties where developers sliced up former agricultural […]

There’s something deeply satisfying about a garden that regenerates itself, returning more generously each year with minimal intervention from you. In my three decades of designing gardens across Britain, I have seen clients’ faces light up when they discover seedlings of their favourite plants appearing in unexpected places, creating those wonderfully spontaneous drifts that define […]

Designing a garden that works for eciteable children who want to launch footballs through your borders AND exhausted parents who want five minutes of peace with a coffee is genuinely challenging. Most families end up with one of two disasters: either a garden completely surrendered to plastic play equipment and bald patches of mud, or […]

When it comes to garden design for children, you may have seen gardens turned into playgrounds with wood chips everywhere or worse, fake grass and the obligatory swing set. However, there are many better ways to subtly design a garden that makes it exciting for children without completely removing the attraction for grown-ups! Usually, people […]

If you’ve got a bare fence line or row of fence panels in your garden, you will know just how depressing and frustrating the view can be. Let’s discuss one of the most overlooked opportunities in garden design: the humble fence line. I see it time and time again in my design consultations, gardeners treating […]