Planning a garden

No matter what size garden you have, encouraging wildlife will help create a diverse environment on your doorstep. This will not only benefit your plants via increased pollination but also welcome a host of wonderful creatures from insects, butterflies, bees, birds and mammals. Building a DIY bug hotel can also help encourage your children to […]

Informal Gardens are probably the most common garden style. An informal garden is less restrictive than, say a formal garden in its design symmetry. Informal gardening can free you from restrictions such as having any detailed horticultural or design knowledge. Thus allowing you to ‘have a go’ at gardening when you first start out, which […]

When you’re new to gardening, you tend to buy plants that simply look nice in the garden centre without considering what plant type they are. This can lead to disjointed gardens or things that look nice for a few weeks and then return to their bland previous state. By understanding the 5 different plant groups […]

Modernist garden design is a striking way to connect your outdoor space to your home, especially if you’re completely renovating your house with a super-slick modern look. This design style is very distinct and very much requires an ‘all-in’ approach. Ideally, the modernist garden design will be part of a house build or renovation. That’s because […]

If you’ve started to dig around a little into the world of Garden Design or have been binge-watching Gardeners’ World, you’ll have come across the term ‘Borrowed Views’. Other terms like a focal point or eye hook are sometimes used, and it may have sparked your imagination to use these in your garden. What on […]

Everyone has their preference when it comes to colour. I’m a sucker for the reds, orange and yellows of the colour wheel. I absolutely love planting up red hot colours for garden design clients bringing that feeling of summer to a border. When I started to design the #explodingatomgarden the red hot central core was […]

It’s easy to think that increasing your hedge height, fences or trellis will bring peace and increase privacy in your garden. However, the maximum fence height is set at 2m in England. You’re only able to achieve so much with this method. I’m going to show you with a recent example of how you can […]

The Exploding Atom Garden is based on a concept of the layers of an atom firing out from a red-hot core. To symbolise these layers, I’ve decided to use Gabions to represent the shards of this Garden Explosion. Given this garden uses very soft landscaping techniques for the borders and grass pathways, I felt it […]

High impact borders can bring the wow factor to your garden. It doesn’t matter whether you have a postage stamp sized garden or a few acres, the principles are the same. Here in the Exploding Atom Garden, I’ve been planting up what I’ve nicknamed the ‘Moody Goth Border’. The aim for this border is to […]

Now I would usually argue against planting in the middle of a 30-year record heatwave. However, when you’ve got a hundred or so plants sat waiting to go in, you can’t really hold off as they frazzle in the 32-degree heat. So I’m caveating this article that where possible avoid planting in the middle of […]