Full Service Garden Design

Service

How it works

Everything you need to take your garden from first idea to finished space.

We’ve designed over 250 gardens this way in the past 15 years. It starts with listening: understanding how you want to use your garden, what it needs practically, and what you want it to feel like. From there, our designers turn that brief into a garden that’s as practical to live in as it is stunning to look at.

A full design and build can feel like a lot of moving parts withdifferent trades, different decisions, different timelines. We keep it simple with one trusted process, and we stay with you from that first conversation, through the build, and beyond.

  1. 01

    Free Consultation

    Begin your garden transformation with a *free no-obligation consultation. This involves a visit to you and your garden to discuss the things you like, it’s a great opportunity for you to ask us questions and see our work too. We will leave you with a clear direction of which service suits you best and for us to send you a quotation. *within a 25 mile radius of Hythe, Kent. A  fee of £90 will be charged for travelling outside this area in Kent and the South East, this is deducted on acceptance of design proposal.

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  2. 02

    Site Survey

    The first job in creating a new exciting garden for you is the less exciting but very important site survey. At this stage we will gather all the measurements we need to be able to accurately design and build your garden. For small  projects we will undertake this ourselves for larger more complex sites we can outsource this for you to a landscape surveyor. Either way you can have confidence e are fully prepared to start the design process.

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  3. 03

    Concept design

    Once we’ve talked through your brief, our award winning garden designers, create a bespoke concept design for your outdoor space. Every garden is designed from scratch around your site, your family, and how you’ll actually use the space. We present this design to you in person in a book format with lots of visuals and walkthrough video and discuss the rationale behind our ideas.

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  4. 04

    Design revisions

    The revision stage is where the garden design becomes yours with two sets of revisions included in your package. We chat through all options at our presentation, you then have time to digest the design and advise us on adjustments you would like. You can adjust layout, planting, materials or features, and we’ll refine the visuals until the design feels right, nothing moves forward until you’re happy with it.

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  5. 05

    Detailed Design

    Once the perfect design is signed off, we work to produce detailed construction drawings and site plans to enable your garden to be built by landscapers or builders. Information and samples of materials are shared and tweaked to perfection.

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  6. 06

    Project Monitoring & Garden Build

    Throughout the whole project, we’ll actively participate and collaborate with clients, contractors & suppliers, helping to assist with the tendering process, offering weekly site visits, phone call assistance with landscapers and delivery & planting of plants.

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  7. 07

    Planting & Aftercare

    We can provide you with a planting quote at any point during the project, source your plants from the best suppliers, arrange delivery, plant them and we even offer an aftercare maintenance service to keep your plants looking their very best.

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Frequently asked questions

A few things you might be wondering before we get started.

Costs vary a lot—a small planting refresh is a different job to a full garden redesign, and no two sites cost the same to build. We’ve designed over 250 gardens in the past 20 years, and the price has always depended on size, complexity, and how much support you want from us. Start with a conversation and we’ll tell you honestly which service fits, with a clear fee agreed before any work begins.

More than choosing plants. We look at how you actually want to use the space; how it relates to your home; the site’s quirks — levels, soil, aspect, and materials; and what’s practical to build and maintain. Then we turn all of that into drawings, visuals and planting plans detailed enough for a contractor to build from.

As early as you can. Bring us in before landscaping or building starts, so we can make decisions about layout, levels, materials and planting together, not as an afterthought. Renovating or extending your home? Loop us in while those plans are still moving so the house and garden get designed as one project rather than two.

Depends on the garden, but most full designs run over several weeks — from the first site visit through concept, detailed design and planting plan. Bigger or more complicated projects, especially anything involving planning permission or other professionals, take longer. We’ll map out the stages and a realistic timeline right at the start.

Yes — we design around how much time you actually want to spend on maintenance, not how much a magazine says you should. Soil, aspect, exposure, rainfall, and how a site copes in a dry summer: all of it shapes the planting palette. We’re not trying to use fewer plants for the sake of it — we’re after planting that holds up, still looks good, and gets better as it establishes rather than sulking through August.

Yes, it’s one of our main areas of expertise. We work with sites facing wind, salt spray and drought regularly, and our team’s background includes work at Sissinghurst Castle and award-winning RHS show gardens, which shapes how we approach every coastal brief. That said, we’re not only coastal specialists; we design gardens all across Kent both by the sea and further inland.

Want to change the layout, paving, levels, paths or seating areas? That’s a full garden design job. Happy with the bones of the garden and just want to transform the planting? A planting design service is usually enough. Not sure which one — have a conversation with us first and we’ll point you in the right way rather than upsell you.

Yes. Tell us your budget early — it helps us shape what’s realistic to build. We’ll help you prioritise, suggest materials and planting that suit that budget, and, where it helps, plan the garden so it can be built in stages rather than all at once.

Genuinely, yes — most people start here. Working out what a garden could become is part of the process, not something you’re expected to arrive with already sorted. We’ll talk through how you want to use the space, what you like and don’t like, how much time you want to spend looking after it, and how you want it to feel – then we’ll build ideas from there, shaped around you, your home and the garden itself.

Lets chat about your garden

Free, no-obligation consultation. Even if we’re not the right fit, you’ll leave with valuable insights about your coastal garden’s potential.

hello@ivyandwhyte.com  ·  +44 (0) 7832 332 436 ·  Hythe, Kent