We survey the ground
Levels, aspect, soil, drainage and every tree worth keeping, tied to the floor level of the house. A garden is designed to the datum it is built on, so we measure it before we draw anything.
Approach
Four steps, and the section runs through all of them.
The drawing on the home page is not a graphic. It is how we design, how we price and how we build — a garden read as a set of layers, each with a place above the ground and a depth below it.
Book a site visitWe draw it in section
Not a mood board — a scaled section through every bed, showing the layers, their mature heights and their root depths, plus a planting plan and a costed schedule. You can build from it, with us or with anyone.
We build from the bottom up
Reduced level, drainage, sub-base and topsoil first, because the half of the section below the datum is the half that fails when it is skipped. Then hard landscaping, then planting, set biggest-first while the beds are open.
We hold it through establishment
A garden is planted small and read mature. For the first three years we water to a plan, prune formatively, cut back and gap up — the work that turns a planting plan into a garden and the part every quote leaves out.
Where every job starts
The plot as found.
Before the layers, before the drawing, this is the ground: one mown storey on compacted subsoil, and everything the section adds still to build. There is no version of the finished garden that skips the digging under it.
Section drawing · the plot as found
The plot as found
The same ground before any design: a mown sward on compacted subsoil, one layer and nothing above it.
| Layer | Height | Root depth | Planting |
|---|---|---|---|
| Compacted subsoil | — | 0.25 m | Builder’s subsoil, compacted, no drainage, no structure. |
| Mown sward | 0–0.1 m | 0.12 m | Rye-grass mown weekly. A single storey, 60mm high, rooting 120mm down. |
Start with the survey.
An hour or two on site, then a drawing you can build to. Book a visit or ring the studio.