'Design' (noun) - a plan or drawing produced to show the look and function or workings of a building, garment, or other object before it is made ( Oxford Languages ) While there's some amazing designed gardens on social media and of course the annual telly show gardens at Chelsea etc, many folks don't have £100K+ to spend on their patch nor the associated spend for high-end design packages. Many of our garden designs in and around Blackheath and Greenwich have used a hybri

Ok, not literally (!). BUT while everything seems to go up in price, for a mere £20 you can buy 3 fantastic used design & gardening books from eBay (other 2nd hand dealers are available!). We highly recommend these especially to the student or amateur alike as great learning & reference resources. Garden History by Tom Turner - a clear & concise reference to historic gardening styles with great plans & visuals. A timeline of the philosophy & subsequent design from 2000BC-t

Many a Chelsea garden or trendy gardening book will extoll herbaceous perennials. Indeed stylistically 'forbs' (another name for HP's) are/were key to cottage gardens, the New Perennial movement and now 'Soft Modernism' garden design. For sure forbs are excellent for providing stunning aesthetics at scale as well as many benefits to wildlife. While they're certainly are the stars of the show, a good foundation of hardy shrubs provide structure, winter interest and robustness

Our part of South London can be tricky for gardeners due to the different types of geology and hence soil in a relatively small geographic area. We've seen super sticky clay soil at Sho Charlton geology ! Sand used for glass, gravels for ballast, clay for bricks & chalk for mortar. oters Hill, gravels in Blackheath village, chalky Westcombe Park & silty riverside Greenwich gardens! Add to that historic human activities such as farming, building and the Luftwaffe (!) which aga

The start of a new year is alway good to reflect upon the the last. Particularly as spring is round the corner and the usual flurry of enquiries and questions. Things seem to change quite quickly these days both climatic and economically thus worth considering these three points in the context of existing or new gardens. Irrigated hedge establishment along the exposed Shooters Hill Rd. Super dry, sunny, gravelly soil & big thirsty tree! 1) Water, water everywhere but not a dr

Here's 3 key pointers for folks considering a new garden. This is based our experiences and how to make sure you get a great garden on-budget and on-time. You can always talk to us too of course! Don't wait 'till April to get a garden for the summer! We've had folks contact us in April and May desiring a new garden for the summer, no doubt the amazing spring gardens on Gardeners World have prompted action here! Get the design foundations right! We liken a new garden to other

Living the dream! A cold but scenic start to the year! This is really the most important season in the garden, and anyone who has 'put the garden to bed' needs to wake up! Spring is round the corner and there's a load of seasonal pruning, shrub planting and perennial dividing to be done. Also design & consultancy-wise we've a number of projects. All of which we'll aim to post on the blog fyi. However, we've taken the weekend to enjoy the heath and the delicious fish & chips a

So our New Years resolution is to embrace tech a bit more to show what we do and perhaps helpful to folks who aren't direct clients (or even from SE London, shock, horror!). We're new to the blog game so bare with us but a common comment is regarding our new logo. It's actually a Hosta halcyon leaf from last autumn. We've a few at home in raised containers (to help prevent slugs & snail damage, moderately successful!). BUT if your looking for a drought/dry tolerant hosta, Hal