Garden Design
We offer a full garden design service, each design individually created to meet your wishes and requirements. All of our designs and concept sketches are drawn by hand, copies of which you will receive as part of the service.
Garden Design Process
01. Initial Meeting and Design Brief
The first step of the design process is a meeting at your home and garden, which we offer free if the garden is within a 10-mile radius of Sherborne. If you are enquiring for a garden outside this area, we will only charge travel expenses. During this meeting, we will discuss your ideas and wishes. We will also show you examples of our work.
If you would like to proceed, the next step is a consultation visit, for which we charge by the hour, with travel expenses if outside a 10-mile radius of Sherborne, during which we will walk around the garden and look at it as it is, as well as the surrounding landscape, discussing your initial ideas, vision and requirements for your garden. We will also ask you to complete a short questionnaire to ensure that we understand what you want from your garden, your budget, your timescale and other such factors. From this we will produce a Garden Design Brief summarising our discussion, which outlines the points and features you require, as well as any suggestions we might add. We charge £75 for this.


02. Survey and Concept Design
03. Working Plan
Once we have agreed the Concept Plan, we will produce a Working Plan which will show definite locations and dimensions of proposed plants, elements and features. This final drawing contains plans for the hard landscaping, such as paths, patios and ponds, enabling the garden to be built either by ourselves or contractors. As part of this, we can also prepare a Lighting Plan.


04. Planting Plan
05. Implementation of your design
Once the design is complete, there are a number of options available for the building of your garden. Small gardens, we can build ourselves and can supply you with a quotation. For other gardens, we can tender for the work from hard landscaping contractors and any other specialists required, such as electricians and water gardening experts, or, if you have your own contractors, we can offer project management as part of this stage. We would recommend that we monitor the construction of your garden by meeting the contractor(s) onsite regularly and keeping you informed of progress. This minimises the risk of delays and allows us to address immediately any issues that may arise.
Once the hard landscaping has been finished, we can organise your planting, sourcing quality plants from nurseries that we trust.


06. Onward Maintenance
Fees
Estimating fees is difficult as it depends on a number of factors. Initial visits of up to 1 hour are free if the garden is within a 10-mile radius of Sherborne, outside of which we only charge travel expenses. Beyond this we essentially charge by the hour – £50 for design work and consultations.
The actual design, consisting of Concept Plans and Sketches, Mood Boards, A Working Plan and a Planting Plan, may take many hours, depending on the size of the garden and how complicated the design, but we will be able to offer you an estimate.
See also:

Border Design
Design for only one existing or new border, or if you want to redesign a tired border, we also offer a border design service »

Garden Consultation
For those of you who would like to improve your own garden but need some initial advice and guidance »