Garden Design & Landscaping

The design is what decides the cost

Most people think of garden design as the nice part. Drawings, planting, what it will look like on a summer evening.

It is actually the part that decides what everything else costs. Where the levels sit determines how much earth has to move. Where the water goes determines whether you need drainage or not. Where the access is determines whether a machine can get in or whether every barrow goes through the house.

Those three decisions are made in the first week, and they set the price of the next three months.

Get the design right and the build gets cheaper. Get it wrong and you pay twice, once to build it and once to undo it.

This is why we design before we dig, even on jobs that get built in stages over several years. A plan does not commit you to doing it all at once. It just means the patio you have this year is not in the way of the terrace you want in three.

What that actually involves

Before anything moves

A first visit. We come out, walk the garden with you and talk about how you want to use it. What you want it for matters more than what it currently looks like.

Working out what the ground will allow. Levels, drainage, access, soil, which bits get sun and which never do. This is the part that decides whether an idea is realistic, and it is far cheaper to find out now than halfway through.

A plan for the whole garden. Where the hard landscaping goes, where the planting goes, how you move through the space, and where the water ends up when it rains.

The build

Photographs of the build

01The groundwork02The hard landscaping03Planting and turf

The groundwork. Excavation, levels, drainage and foundations. None of it is visible when the job is done, and all of it is there to support what goes on top and carry water away.

The hard landscaping. Paving, stonework, walls, steps, paths and fencing, all built to the same plan by the same people.

Planting and turf. Chosen for the aspect and the soil rather than for how it looks on the day it goes in.

At the end

A walk round. We go through the finished garden with you before we call it done. Anything that is not right gets put right.

Why a builder, not a gardener

Graham did not come to landscaping through gardening. He came to it through the building trade. He started at fifteen and has spent his working life building, plastering and finishing houses, inside and out.

That matters more than it sounds. A garden that lasts is a building job before it is a planting job. A retaining wall is holding back tonnes of wet earth. A patio without proper foundations and the right falls can sink and hold puddles after a few winters. Steps that are not consistent are steps people trip on. These are the parts that fail, and they fail for the same reasons buildings fail: poor groundwork, poor drainage, and rushing the parts nobody will ever see.

The gardening came later, and that is where the softer side comes from. What copes with Devon clay. What will stand up to wind coming off the moor. How a border actually fills out over three years rather than how it looks the week it goes in.

What it costs

There is no price list, because there is no standard garden. A small courtyard and a two acre plot are not the same job, and neither are two identical looking lawns if one of them sits on solid clay.

What we can tell you is how the price works. We come and look, at no charge and with no obligation. You get a written quote with the work set out and a price that does not move. If something unexpected comes out of the ground, and occasionally it does, we stop and tell you before we do anything about it.