Design services

Every design package begins with a site meeting and a full survey of your garden, and ends with a complete, buildable design that can be accurately priced and worked from. In between you receive:

• A detailed written design brief
• A CAD layout plan
• A mood board setting the material direction
• A planting mood board, with trees and key structural plants specified
• A finished levels plan and key dimensions
• Two rounds of amendments
• Concept costings at concept stage, so the design can be checked against the likely build cost

The 3D Plus Package adds a full 3D model of the garden, photo-realistic visuals and a video walkthrough.

The Standard Package gives you the complete, buildable design: plans, levels, dimensions, mood boards and material direction. The 3D Plus Package includes all of that and adds a full 3D model, realistic visuals and a video walkthrough of the finished garden.

The difference matters most where a garden is changing shape. If yours involves significant level changes, retaining walls, steps or new structures, it is genuinely hard to judge from a 2D plan how the finished space will feel to stand in. How enclosed a lower terrace will be, say, or how a run of steps sits against the house. The 3D model lets you check that while changes still cost nothing but time.

On a flat garden with a clear brief, the Standard Package is usually all that is needed.

Design fees are set per project rather than taken from a price list, because the design work involved varies considerably between gardens. A level courtyard with a clear brief takes far less design time than a tiered garden needing new levels, retaining and reworked access.

Fees are quoted as a fixed amount plus VAT for each package, not an hourly rate, so you know exactly what the design stage will cost before committing to anything. You receive both figures in a written proposal after your consultation call, alongside notes from the call and early guidance on likely build costs. The consultation call itself is free and carries no obligation.

Yes. The design fee covers the design work: the survey, the brief, the plans, the amendments and the concept costings. The build is quoted separately, once the design is finalised and there is something accurate to price.

This is deliberate. Nothing can be quoted properly before the design exists, and a build price given before then is guesswork. Working in this order means the figure you eventually receive is a real quotation against a real drawing.

There is no obligation to build with us. The design is a complete piece of work in its own right and the plans belong to you, so you are free to take them to other contractors, build the garden yourself, or come back to the project when it suits you.

Most of our clients do carry on with us, and there is a practical reason for it. When the people who drew the garden are the people building it, there is no gap between the drawing and the quotation, nobody reinterpreting someone else's detail on site, and one team accountable for the finished result. It makes the whole thing considerably smoother. But the choice is entirely yours, and the design stands on its own either way.

From the site meeting to the finished design, allow around three weeks where feedback comes back to us promptly. The pace is usually set by how quickly the design brief is confirmed and the amendments are returned rather than by the drawing work itself.

The build is booked separately. We are currently taking bookings around three to four months ahead, though this varies through the season, so it is worth starting the design earlier than feels necessary if you have a particular summer in mind.

Only where the garden has significant level changes, tiers or retaining walls. Where it does, accurate levels are essential. Designing steps, retaining structures and drainage from estimated heights is exactly how expensive mistakes get made.

A topographical survey is carried out by a third-party surveyor and costs around £550 plus VAT. It is an additional cost on top of the design fee, and we confirm it before anything is booked in.

On a flat or gently sloping garden it usually is not needed, and we take our own measurements at the site meeting instead. We assess which applies when we visit.

Every design sets the planting direction for your garden. Trees, hedges and the key structural and architectural planting are specified as part of the design, and a planting mood board sets the style, colours and overall feel of the borders. That gives you a clear planting framework to work to.

How far you take it from there is up to you, and clients approach it differently.

If you would like a full border-by-border planting plan, with every plant chosen, supplied and planted for you, we can produce one, and many clients do. Others enjoy doing their own planting, or prefer to build the borders up gradually over a few seasons, and the structural planting in the design gives them a proper framework to plant into. Where a garden already has established plants worth keeping, we will design around them rather than clearing everything and starting again.

The detailed planting is drawn once the final layout is confirmed and the borders can be measured exactly, so it is designed around the finished garden rather than an early concept. We will talk through which approach suits you as the design develops.

Yes. Two rounds of amendments are included in both packages.

Every client has their own preferences, and part of the point of seeing a design is being able to respond to it. You may want the dining area a little larger, a different material underfoot, or more of the space given over to planting. The amendment rounds are there so those preferences can be worked in properly rather than compromised on.

Most clients use them, and that is exactly what they are for. It is always easier to adjust something on paper than once it has been built.

Yes, and this is one of the genuine advantages of working with a company that both designs and builds.

Because we construct the gardens we design, we know what things actually cost to build. So at concept stage, part-way through the design process, we provide concept costings: a realistic view of what the concept in front of you would cost to construct. You see that figure while the design can still be changed.

If it is running ahead of what you had in mind, that is exactly the point to scale things back, whether by simplifying a specification, changing a material, reducing the extent of the work or splitting it into phases. The design then develops around a figure that works for you.

A design drawn with no reference to build cost is how people end up with a beautiful set of drawings they cannot afford to build. Concept costings exist so that does not happen. You are never paying us to design a garden you were never going to be in a position to build.

The consultation is a free phone call with one of our designers, usually around fifteen to twenty minutes. You talk through what is not working in the garden now, how you want to use the space and roughly what you have in mind to spend. It helps enormously if you send photos or a rough sketch beforehand. Afterwards you receive a written proposal covering what was discussed, along with both package options and their fees.

The site meeting happens once you have chosen a package. We come to the garden, walk the space with you, take a full survey, and check levels and access properly. This is where the brief is settled in detail.

You then receive a written design brief to read, correct and confirm before any design work begins, so nothing is drawn until we have agreed what we are drawing.

We are based in Horsforth, Leeds, and work across Leeds, West Yorkshire and North Yorkshire, including Roundhay, Oakwood, Chapel Allerton, Cookridge, Rawdon, Otley, Wetherby, Harrogate, Ilkley, Huddersfield, Mirfield, Brighouse, Dewsbury, Ossett, Heckmondwike and Cleckheaton.

As a general rule we work within about an hour's travel of Horsforth. Beyond that, travel time starts adding cost to a project without adding anything to the finished garden.