How Much Design Needed?!

'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 hybrid of approaches that make sense for the size and relatively lower budgets vs. the £300K+ show gardens! Essentially techniques such as sketching, hand-drawing & fit-for-purpose CAD (i.e., no photo time consuming realistic rendering or virtual reality head-sets!) can provide a suitable level of aesthetic detail for the client & technical info for the landscaping contractor.

We've examples of reconfiguring existing out-door spaces with minimal build intervention such as basements or patio-gardens where subtle design has unifying the space, screening unsightly elements (or neighbours!) or making gardens look more spacious.

An SE7 garden where tapering edging makes the garden look longer, planting blends with the neighbouring trees & vertical trellis to provide height to balance the garden.

An I seeing double !! Yep, you are! A well placed large garden mirror screens an unslightly SE3 retaining wall & doubles (mirrors!) the narrow planting bed.

A grim Greenwich garden. No structure and an in-your-face shed made it feel small and boring.

So now the shed gone and a reworking of the space by adding curves and separation adds interest and a draw to venture to the back!