Any experience of finding a garden designer?

[TFSRM]

Our garden needs a complete revamp. Front garden is tarmaced which needs digging up, dead tree needs taking out and it needs levelling. Back garden needs overhaul; plants are overgrown from years of being left to grow without pruning or being looked after (previous owners, not us). How do we go about finding a garden designer who will design a lovely, new garden for us to enjoy? It feels like such a big job for someone to take on.

I employed a garden designer about 10 years ago in my previous house. Think I found him in the local newspaper. You could try Googling garden design in your area or try one of the sites like Mybuilder.com or CheckaTrade - usually tradespeople will post photos of previous jobs that you can view. You can also post your job and garden designers will contact you to discuss.

My designer did a wonderful job. I talked with him about what I wanted to achieve within my (quite tight) budget. He drew a lovely watercolour of the design which was so helpful in visualising the finished garden. Think about the type of planting you want e.g. screening for privacy, flowers for colour, low maintenance etc. Any hard landscaping as well. Sounds like you already have some ideas for what you want to achieve which is good. Be realistic about your budget - mine was a tiny terrace back garden but cost over 2k - there was a lot of labour required and paving stones, gravel, plants etc. Worth every penny though.

Thanks, that's really helpful. I definitely want to see some ideas/previous projects before committing. DH wants low maintenance and screening :)

I found mine at a garden show. Paid £300ish for a full scale drawing & design. Couldn't afford to do the ideal which would have been about £50k but have done quite a few of the ideas & they've been brilliant. Worth every penny, (although we have a strange split level thing going on that is awkward)

I think it would be cheaper to largely to do yourself if you or DH are DIY inclined?

Pay someone to get the tarmac up and level the ground but you can chop the dead tree down yourself as close to ground level as possible ready to grow a trailing plant over it later and pull up the plants in the back.

Low maintance to me means long lived perennials and perennials and annuals that self seed and stay compact.
The bulk of my garden is made up of such plants.

If you ensure the ground is weeded, then dump a nice thick layer of compost over it, plant your plants then cover with more compost not many weeds come up.
Google ‘no dig gardening’.

I would personally be cautious about hiring gardeners, as far as I know the industry isn’t tightly regulated.
My mum has hired 3 different ‘professional’ landscape gardeners over the years. None any good!

Her back garden was particularly bad, very steeply sloped and dangerous.

The ‘professional’ gardeners she hired did a lovely job at first glance installing a patio, walled borders, levelling etc.

Then a year or so later it became clear the plant choices were totally wrong - far too big for the space, required frequently pruning which she couldn’t do but much more seriously the cement started coming away from the steps and patio, the wall started falling apart.

It was so dangerous the garden was unusable, my DH (ex builder) ended up rebuilding the entire patio, walls and steps.
She had to pay someone to rip out all the enormous, ridiculous shrubs she couldn’t maintain, I used to prune them when I was over there but I don’t live local anymore.

I think you need to try and get recommendations. We have used garden designers in two houses. In both cases the first ones we found (different areas so different people) seemed really good, came and viewed garden, one even got as far as spending a day measuring up and then never delivered plans. It didn’t cost us anything but did delay the projects by months as they kept promising to deliver. In both cases I was moaning about it to friends and someone unexpected recommend a designer, who both turned out to be really good.