Most clients I see don’t normally have a budget figure in mind for the garden, mostly because they just don’t know how much they need to be spending but also, I think, because they don’t view the garden in the same way as they would a house building project.

It’s almost impossible to give a defnitive figure from the outset as until I have taken the brief and know what elements are required in the garden I just don’t have the information to work with.  A small garden, say 50m², could cost anything from £5,000 to £50,000, more even!  A garden with a small terrace, lawn and flowerbeds will be a very different kettle of fish to an all singing, all dancing contemporary courtyard garden with raised beds and pleached hedging.

I’m not saying that if you don’t have a huge budget, you can’t have a gorgeous garden but if you are planning a garden project you do need to be aware that any landscaping costs will be comparable to any other building project.

The complexity of the site will also have an impact on the cost of a garden.  A garden on a steep slope for example will probably need to be terraced to make it usable and this could eat into a significant chunk of your budget.  The materials chosen will also make a difference to how much you spend, reclaimed York stone looks beautiful, especially with a period property, but because it will come in varying sizes and depths, it takes almost twice the time to lay compared with a machined budget stone and this means that labour costs will be more.

When I work with clients I put together outline budget figures at the concept design stage.  If I have been given a budget figure at the beginning this allows me to check that the garden is going to sit within that budget.  If I don’t have a figure from the client, costing the job when the design is very much a conceptual idea means that we can look at making changes if necessary without compromising the finished product.

If you are going for a full garden makeover you’ll obviously need to allocate a bigger chunk of cash.  I am working on a full redesign (front and back) at the moment where the budget is set at £60,000.  I appreciate this figure will probably make your jaw drop but we are having to work hard to keep within this budget without there being any unusual structures in the garden.

So, regrettably, I can’t give you a definitve answer to the “how much will it cost?” question, but I hope I have given some food for thought.  If you are choosing to work with a designer and have a figure in mind, do let them know from the outset, that way they’ll know what they’re working with from day one and can help you to achieve a garden that will work for you within that budget and meets your requirements.  I do appreciate that it can be difficult to part with your hard-earned cash but your designer should be acting with your best interests at heart and will be able to guide you with regards to where your budget will be best spent for the maximum impact.

As you know, my parents own and run Forton Nursery in Somerset and I normally go down and help them with the local shows.  This weekend was the Taunton Flower Show… Read more

This month’s Flowers in Pots post features potted designs which were especially made to raise money for the Horticultural Internship Programme at The Garden Museum in London. Read more

The weather has been a challenge for most gardeners this year, a very hot dry spring followed by a wet cool spell and now it can’t quite work out what it’s doing!  One thing that is certain is the early arrival of the late flowering perennials and my garden is a bloom with plants that don’t normally come into their own until September. Read more

Friday marked the end of week 2 of the construction phase for the project near Woking and now that the site has been cleared and the initial ground works have been completed, the new design can be “set out” on the ground and the final levels set.  I love this part of the construction phase, the mucky work has finished and you can really start to see the new garden begin to emerge and with this project, the garden at the moment truly is a blank canvass… Read more

A week or so ago I went to Savill Garden with Rona Wheeldon of Flowerona to see the new Rose Garden which was designed by Andrew Wilson and opened for the first time earlier this year.  Because of the challenging weather conditions we’ve had this year, the hot dry spring and the warm wet spell over the last month, unfortunately the roses were past their best – if we’d managed to get there a month ago, I think we would have seen a much more impressive display. Read more

My visit to Loseley Park Garden was a little later than anticipated this month, but it certainly made for a more dramatic change than I had been expecting.  It has been 6 weeks since my last visit to the garden, which doesn’t sound long, but in the world of perennial planting it can make a huge difference to the overall look and feel of a space. Read more

Very excitingly, the build for the garden in Woking commenced this morning so I was on site first thing to walk round the garden with the landscaper and to earmark which plants are to be moved to a holding bed until we’re ready to plant in the autumn.  I also presented the planting design to the client, the last piece in the design jigsaw. Read more

When I was recently invited to Loseley Park for a special tour I met Rebecca Younger, Features Editor for the Surrey Advertiser.  We got talking about the Chelsea Flower Show and she asked me if I would like to contribute to the next House and Garden Supplement with my views about Chelsea and how the readers might be able to recreate some of the design ideas in their own gardens. Read more

I spent last week in Brittany with my partner, Phil, getting the family house ready for rental over the next few weeks of the Summer.  We were very fortunate to be able to see one of the stages of the Tour de France which went through the local town, Mur de Bretagne….but that’s another story for another time, and not very garden design related! Read more