What Can an Experienced Garden Designer Bring to Your Project?
Summary
An experienced garden designer has years of previous projects, ideas and practical challenges to draw upon. But experience shouldn’t mean approaching every garden in the same way. A thorough understanding of your property, your garden and what you want from the space should still shape every design decision.
Key Takeaways
- Experience gives a garden designer a wide range of previous projects and ideas to draw upon.
- Every property and garden still needs an individual approach.
- Practical experience can help with everything from awkward levels to materials and construction.
- A thorough site assessment and survey should form the starting point for any garden design.
- Looking through previous projects can help you understand a designer’s experience and the variety of gardens they have worked on.
When you’re choosing a garden designer, experience can tell you a lot. Someone who has worked on many different gardens will have encountered all sorts of properties, layouts and challenges along the way, giving them plenty to draw on when they approach your project.
But that experience should never result in a one-size-fits-all approach. Your garden will have its own layout, conditions and character, while the way you want to use it will be personal to you.
At Andy Stedman Design, we’ve designed more than 3,000 gardens, from compact city spaces to much larger country properties. In this guide, we’ll look at why that experience matters and what it can bring to the design of your own garden.
Why Does Experience Matter in Garden Design?
Experience in garden design comes from working on lots of different spaces and seeing first-hand the challenges that can crop up from one project to the next. Each garden adds something new, whether it’s finding a way to deal with an awkward layout, working with difficult levels or seeing how different design ideas come together once they’re built.
At Andy Stedman Design, we can draw on that experience when we approach your garden, but we never assume we already know what it needs. We start with an on-site consultation, followed by a design brief, site analysis and topographical survey, so the design is based on what’s actually in front of us.
To learn more about the role of a garden designer and how it differs from other landscape professionals, see our post Garden Designer vs Landscape Architect: What’s the Difference?.
Why Choose An Experienced Garden Designer? Key Benefits
Having worked on many different gardens gives a designer plenty of experience to draw on. They’ve seen different layouts, properties and challenges, and can use what they’ve learned to explore ideas and make practical decisions as your own design develops.
Here are some of the ways that experience can make a difference to your garden project:
1. Experience of Different Properties and Gardens
Over the years, we’ve worked on everything from compact city gardens to much larger country properties. Each project brings something different, whether that’s the size and shape of the space, the style of the property or a particular challenge that needs to be worked around.
That experience gives us plenty to draw on, but it doesn’t mean repeating what we’ve done before. Instead, we can take what we’ve learned from other projects and use it to explore ideas that make sense for your particular home, garden and lifestyle.
2. Understanding the Garden in Its Wider Setting
A garden should feel like it belongs with the house rather than being designed as a completely separate space. Having worked with so many different styles of property, we can look at how the layout, materials and planting will sit alongside your home as well as within the garden itself.
It’s also about how you want to use the space. Your garden might become somewhere for eating outside, entertaining friends or simply spending more time as a family.
For more ideas, see our post Garden Design for Outdoor Living: Patios, Kitchens & Entertaining Areas which looks at some of the ways patios, outdoor kitchens and entertaining areas can help make the garden feel like a genuine extension of your home.
3. Experience of Different Site Challenges
Not every garden is straightforward. Over the years, we’ve worked with slopes, awkward access, limited space and plenty of other challenges that need to be considered before a design starts to take shape.
Having dealt with similar situations before means we have experience to draw on, but every site is different. That’s why we still take the time to properly assess your garden and understand its levels, layout and existing features before deciding what could work.
For more on where this experience can make a difference, see our post Professional Garden Design: When to Call the Experts.
4. Ideas Drawn From Thousands of Real Gardens
Having designed more than 3,000 gardens, we’ve seen all sorts of ideas work in different spaces. That experience gives us plenty to draw on when we’re thinking about the layout, materials and features that could suit your own garden.
It’s not about repeating a design that worked somewhere else. Instead, we can take what we’ve learnt from previous projects and use it to explore ideas that make sense for your property, your space and how you want to use it.
You can see the variety of gardens we’ve worked on in our portfolio, from smaller family gardens and sloping sites to coastal properties and larger gardens with outdoor kitchens, pergolas and pools.
5. Experience of Different Garden Conditions
Every garden has its own conditions to work with. The amount of sun and shelter it gets, its soil, drainage and exposure can all influence the design and the plants that will be best suited to the space.
Having worked on so many different gardens means we’ve encountered a wide range of these conditions before. That experience gives us a useful starting point, but we still assess every garden individually rather than assuming that what worked on one project will work on another.
To learn more about why understanding the site from the beginning is so important, see our post The Biggest Mistakes Homeowners Make Before Redesigning Their Garden.
6. Practical Knowledge From Design to Construction
Working with an experienced garden designer who understands the practical side of landscaping can be particularly useful when it comes to turning ideas into something that can actually be built. Experience of projects in the area means they’ve seen how different designs, materials and construction methods work in real gardens, not just on a plan.
Andy started his career as a landscaping apprentice and has more than two decades of experience across landscaping, construction and garden design. We can draw on that practical knowledge from the beginning, considering how the design will be built, how different elements will work together and what makes sense for your particular garden.
7. Experience to Guide Your Project
There are a lot of decisions to make when redesigning a garden, particularly if you’re starting with a space that needs to change completely. An experienced garden designer can help you work through those decisions, from deciding what should be included to understanding which ideas will work best together.
Having taken thousands of gardens through the design process, we know which questions need to be asked and what needs to be considered at each stage. That experience helps us guide the project from the initial ideas through to a detailed design that’s ready to move forward.
How to Choose an Experienced Garden Designer
Experience is important, but the number of years someone has been designing gardens doesn’t tell you everything. When comparing garden designers, it’s worth looking at the kind of work they’ve done and how they approach each new project.
- Their previous experience: Look for experience of different gardens, properties and challenges, including projects that have similarities to your own.
- The variety in their portfolio: Their previous work should show how they respond to different spaces, styles and client requirements rather than relying on one particular look.
- How they get to know your garden: Find out what happens before any design work begins, from the initial consultation to surveying and assessing the site.
- Their approach to design: Look for gardens that feel individual to the property and homeowner rather than variations of the same design.
- Their practical knowledge: Experience of landscaping and construction can help ensure that what looks good on paper will also work when it comes to building the garden.
- How clearly they explain the process: You should understand what happens at each stage, what you’ll receive and how your ideas will develop into a finished design.
For more help with your decision, see our post How to Choose the Right Garden Designer for Your Project.
Why Choose Andy Stedman Design as Your Experienced Garden Designer?
Having designed more than 3,000 gardens, we’ve built up a great deal of experience with different homes and gardens. That gives us plenty to draw on when we start a new project, while still approaching every garden individually.
We take the time to visit your property, understand how you want to use the space and properly assess the site before we begin designing. From there, we develop a design specifically for your home and garden, with plans and 3D visualisations helping you see how everything could come together.
If you’re looking for an experienced garden designer, take a look through our projects to see the different approaches we’ve taken from one property to the next.
Conclusion
An experienced garden designer brings more than a collection of previous projects. Each garden they’ve worked on adds to their understanding of what can be achieved, how different challenges can be approached and what needs to be considered before a design makes its way from paper into the garden.
At Andy Stedman Design, we bring that experience to every project without losing sight of what makes your garden individual. We take the time to understand your property, how you want to use the space and what you’d like to change, then use our experience to help shape a design that works for you.
Contact Us Today
If you’re thinking about redesigning your garden, contact our team to arrange an initial consultation and start exploring what could work for your space.
FAQs
How much experience should a garden designer have?
There isn’t a set number of years you should look for. What matters is the quality and variety of their previous work, along with whether they have experience of projects with similar requirements or challenges to your own.
Is practical landscaping experience important for a garden designer?
It can be a real advantage. Understanding landscaping and construction helps a designer consider how their ideas will actually be built, from changes in level and hard landscaping to the way different features come together.
Should I choose a garden designer based on their previous style?
Not necessarily. A portfolio is useful for judging the quality and range of a designer’s work, but your garden shouldn’t simply be a copy of a previous project. Look for a designer who can adapt their approach to different properties, spaces and homeowners.