Landscape and horticulture expert

Creating 'desire lines' in your garden business model

Landscapers, gardeners and garden designers will be more than familiar with desire lines and the impact they have on planning a garden or managing an existing scheme that may suffer with the adverse effects of a desire line.

I want to take this theory forward a little and apply the same thinking to how we conduct our own business and how, with a little thought, we can create desire lines that allow you to sell your products and services without using a metaphorical battering ram to channel a potential customer into a direction that they do not want to go.

The night garden is often overlooked

How many of us spend our time in the garden during the day but rarely venture out after dark to take in the atmosphere?

I admit, looking at a brightly coloured flower or taking in the scent is easy when you can see the subject but I urge you, when the evening is especially still, to venture out and just walk around in the dusk or dark and feel how the garden tends to reach out to you rather than the other way round.

Develop a garden design from a single 'thought'

Did you know, even if you never commit it to paper but you build a garden, you are by definition, a garden designer?

If you can see the finished result in your minds eye and, by instinct, scale the garden to flow within the space I would say, you are a talented individual.

Managing desire lines when planning your landscaping

I have written about desire lines and their importance in designing a garden or commercial landscaping project.
I thought it would be a good idea to bring this to the surface and add a little extra.

The original post on desire lines can be found here; it explains how important it is to consider human behaviour when planning the set up of a garden.

Landscape gardeners and designers - are they disenfranchised from the art world?

If Leonardo Davinci was alive today I am certain he would make millions of pounds for a new work.

If Capability Brown was alive today or perhaps the gardening matriarch Gertrude Jekyll their creations would cost thousands if not hundreds of thousands in commissions.

But how come the modern day garden artiste is so undervalued? I read yesterday that the composer Paul Farrer, who penned the theme tune to the Weakest Link, has made enough money to retire and gets thousands of pounds every time the theme is played when the show is aired somewhere around the world.

Forget the eccentric Irish and the love of painted concrete, I am talking about the bright, talanted, deep minded and visionary garden designers who instantly know how to use the light, colours textures and form, coupled with hard fabric and atmosphere in their creations.

Never say never

I can remember the meeting very well. It was 1985 on the top of a hanger just outside Selborne.

The venue was a small three acre field which was sandwiched between three very old cottages built from the limestone that makes the properties of the area so distinctive and appealing.

Picture shows the property with tennis court and the extent of the garden which was planted out.

The field had just been acquired from a farmer by the two sets of owners, on one side a London based lawyer - who handles Lady Diana and Price Charles' divorce - and an antiques dealer on the other.

The plan was to split the field into three with half going to the lawyer and the other half split between the antiques dealer and a little empty cottage that lay nestled into the north facing side of the hanger. It was empty but destined for renovation.