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

We will then make a return visit to conduct a survey of the garden, which may take half a day, and charges for this range from £200-£500, depending on the size and elevations on site. Depending on the size and complexity of your garden, we may recommend the services of a professional surveyor. At the same time, we will take a soil sample. We will then provide you with a Concept Plan, including ideas about design, landscaping, such as materials, paths and garden structures, and planting. This will then give you the encouragement and guidance to work on your garden yourselves. Fees for this will depend on the size of the garden and how complicated the design, but we will be able to offer you an estimate.

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

As part of your design, we will create a detailed planting plan, which shows the exact position of all plants that have been selected. To accompany these plans, we will provide you with a Plant Schedule that contains a list of plants with sizes and quantities and a Maintenance Schedule, to allow you to plant and maintain them yourself over time, or hand to a nursery/planting contractor. We can also supply the plants at a competitive price.

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

After the garden build is complete, if you do not wish to maintain the garden yourself, we can organize the ongoing maintenance of your garden.

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.