Planting Design

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.