How to choose a garden designer?

[mylifeisgood]

In the absence of any personal recommendations, I can only go by googling or looking on yell.com or the like, and then looking at the designer's website.
Do I go by location - ie do they have to be close to me or can I look further afield?

Do they all charge a similar amount?

Has anyone used one, and have any advice?

I have a small London garden, but all the designers' websites that do urban stuff seem to do the kind of urban that involves minimal gardening. Whereas I want to maximise the gardening in my urban setting. It is an urban garden but I don't want it to look that way.

There is a professional society of garden designers, so if you study their site you should get some ideas.

Also the ngs - National Gardens Scheme - may have gardens open in you area, so search their site with your postcode.

www.sgd.org.uk/

www.ngs.org.uk/

I am a garden designer.
Usually you need to decide what your budget is first as prices vary a lot.
I would charge £150 a day for the design work, which for a small garden should take a couple of days initially, then maybe another one or two for alterations according to the clients' wishes.

Building the garden is the larger cost of the project but you may choose to do this yourself or get independent landscapers in to do this.
Your garden designer can leave you with a rough plan of works to follow or more detailed schedule, but I would expect to be supervising the project if this were the case.

It's nice to hear that someone actually wants to go down the planting route, as you said, so many clients just want hard landscaping these days.

Thank you both. Ferguson, the Society of Garden Designers has quite a good list that I hadn't come across. One man seems totally bang on from his portfolio - he may be booked up, but have emailed to find out.

Didn't think about the NGS. I didn't know garden designers did that - I thought it was enthusiastic amateurs. Will take a look tomorrow.

Cutteduppear - I wonder if the portfolios I have seen that have been all about the hard landscaping, are just a result of client demand then? Rather than an indication of the designers' tastes? Don't get me wrong, they were good looking gardens, and some did have lovely planting too, I just felt that they looked like they would need a vacuum cleaner and a duster running over them to keep them looking nice, and I want something more natural.

I would say it's definitely client demand! I'm a garden designer too and sadly most of the enquiries I get are from people who don't actually like gardening but have a garden and don't know what to do with it; or the cash rich but time poor who want something that looks great with minimal effort. So the brief is usually 'a low maintenance garden'.

There's also the fact that minimalist, highly styled 'outdoor rooms' are pretty fashionable in affluent, urban areas.

Rare as hens' teeth, and an absolute delight, are the clients who are enthusiastic about their garden and who want the designer to make the best use of their space and get the ball rolling with some inspired planting, that the client can then run with.

You sound like one of the latter - you are going to make your garden designer's year.

I entirety echo RhubarbGarden's sentiment.

You're neither of you in London are you?.......

Or Somerset?

We have half an acre and have some ideas of what we want - well I have ideas of what I like - but find we end up spending a fortune on plants and they don't work as we though for one reason or another.

DH loves doing the actual work. I prefer the planning, buying and sitting in garden drinking wine!

I actually got complete,y overwhelmed by our last years. Felt like never ending work.

Sorry for hijack mylife

Sussex, sorry.

I've had garden designs from students from a local university that runs a garden designer course for free before (they wanted clients for the students to practice on). I daresay that the results aren't as good as from a fully qualified experienced designer but it was still helpful bouncing ideas around and seeing someone else's perspective.

Talking through their portfolios was really interesting; there were those who had designed the garden this way because interlocking circles are very interesting and grasses are in fashion; then others who'd based their designs on the need for somewhere for the client's kids to play and that their client loved French gardens. So I'd say it's worth having a chat to see if their focus is making a beautiful garden or making a garden to their client's requirements.

I'm not in London but I do work.there sometimes.
I've had three clients in the same street in south west London.

I would be grateful for advice about my gardens. I am limited as to what can do as I'm disabled but for the last few years I seem to have spent all my summers on a kneelpad with a hand trowel turning over about 2 to 3 inches of soil in currently existing beds to remove weeds when the soil is poor and could do with double digging which I can't do.

Late last year I fell and fractured my hip and thigh bone whilst trying to trim the front privet hedge with hand shears so have decided I will hire a gardener for an hour a week. I have very definite ideas of what I want to see in my garden but don't have the artistic ability to design it.

If I looked for a landscaper prior to hiring a weekly gardener, would it be acceptable for me to tell them what I like and dislike before they do a design? I really want my garden to be predominantly green, pink, blue, purple, mauve, white and to be insect friendly (may delve into keeping bees this year). Also there are colours and plants I really dislike.

Would a landscape designer be insulted if I were to want them to take my likes and dislikes on board prior to doing a design?

Sorry to have rambled on - my last question is if any of the landscapers on here work in the Buckinghamshire area.

Silveroldie any garden designer worth their salt will ask you extensive questions about what exactly you want, how you use the garden and any preferences you have for plants and colours. If they don't, don't hire them.

I'm going to be looking for a garden designer who can maximise the space (large) for veg, herbs and other edibles. Presumably there are people who specialise in that? Hope this isn't a hijack, OP!

Any good garden designer should be more than capable of that, LoneRanger. Do ask them for their experience of growing/designing for fruit and veg though, just to be sure.