Service Description

Welcome to Better Planting, where we offer a Double Quick Garden Design Class to help you create the garden of your dreams efficiently. Vibe : Every garden has its own particular atmosphere and sense of place. Where this is positive, we work to harmonise with and emphasize it; where not, we may seek to create a more completely separate world around you with a new vibe. Although what we do involves following rules and principles, there is an important element of it that is intuitive or instinctive. So to enable us to work optimally, we need as much access to the site as possible. We have a studio van to facilitate working nearby with minimal intrusion. We have in house skills to carry out most aspects of garden design and can advise on aspects of hard landscaping such as position of garden buildings, paths, fences, ponds and other structures. However, we are principally a planting consultancy and it is advising on planting projects that is our main work. Why you need us There are tens of thousands of plants available to gardeners. With a very wide knowledge of what exists, we help you to make the right choice of plants for the place bearing in mind your requirements. These may be quite specific; you may for example need something that will grow to eye level to screen out an unwanted view within a year or two but not need pruning very often thereafter. This would tell us we need to find a plant of perhaps semi-mature size to start with and that is relatively slow growing, as well as being happy in your growing conditions. Making the choice without specialist advice can be a false economy. Following the decision about which plant to use, there is then the question of where to find it. We have an increasing database of the stock of nurseries both in the UK and in mainland Europe to help with this where a suitable subject is not locally readily available. About our expert : Ian has a long history in horticulture beginning with a childhood enthusiasm for gardens and the natural world. The school holidays were often spent working in local nurseries. This lead to a year as a short term entrant at the Royal Horticultural Society's garden at Wisley gaining a better understanding of practical gardening. Following this, he took a year out to make a tour of the leading botanical gardens of the world which turned into a five year absence from the UK working in botanical gardens, commercial and amenity horticulture.