Plants & outdoors

The garden as another room

A garden is really a room with a different ceiling. It needs a layout, a planting palette and somewhere worth sitting, all worked out for the light and soil you actually have rather than the ones you might wish for.

Create Your Ambience
A modern courtyard garden with pale limestone paving, a built-in timber bench with cream cushions, timber slat screening and raised beds full of ferns, hostas, grasses and clipped box

Concept visual

It starts with what your plot is genuinely like: which end gets the afternoon sun, what the soil does when it rains, and where you would sit if there were anywhere worth sitting. Light and soil are what decide whether planting thrives or struggles, so the layout comes out of those, and the planting comes out of the layout.

You get a planting palette chosen for your light and soil, a layout and furniture plan, and a sourcing list that goes peat-free and UK-grown first. Three rounds of changes are included, because a garden always reads differently once you have lived with the plan for a week.

Good for

  • A long thin garden with no shape to it
  • A walled courtyard doing nothing
  • A new-build plot of turf and fence panels

How it works

The same way, whatever the space.

1

Show me your space

Send over some photographs from your phone, or walk me round with a quick video if that’s easier, along with rough measurements and some honest answers about how you actually use the space. It takes about 20 minutes.

2

Review the concept

Within a week, I’ll add a concept board to , covering the direction, the colours, and the layout. Have a look through it and let me know what’s working for you and what isn’t.

3

Get your finished design

The final board, a layout drawn to scale, and a clickable list of recommended pieces and peat-free planting, all kept within your budget and sourced ethically where it matters.

Everything happens in writing, through , wherever you are in the UK. No calls to join and no meetings to arrange. Three rounds of changes are included, and every enquiry, concept and list comes from me, personally.

Plants & outdoors

Also in this part of the studio.

Tell Rachel about your space.

Send some photos or a video and she will reply within a working day. An enquiry is simply a chance to see if you and Rachel are a good fit to work together.

Create Your Ambience