Garden Design FAQs – by Award Winning Designer Tim Brayford

This garden is an overgrown mess, but where to begin?

Tim Brayford Garden Design FAQs

I’d like to have my garden designed, how do I go about this?

Please contact us to arrange for a consultation. This exchange of ideas will be the foundation on which your new garden will be created. Our follow up recommendation reports are very popular and provide a written reference point on which the proposed landscaping works are based.

I’m very interested in having you design a garden for me, where can I see examples of what you have done in the past?

Please visit both the portfolio and testimonial pages of our website www.timbrayford.co.uk to view some of our past projects and hear what our very many satisfied clients have had to say.

Landscaping Proposal Example 1

When is the best time to have a garden designed ?

The consultation and design stages of the project may be done at any time. Although gardens can also be landscaped at any time of year more can be done when the days are longer and the weather is good. Rain and mud creates mess and will slow the work down. Planting can be done at any time of year but autumn, winter and spring are better for getting them established.

How much will having my garden landscaped cost?

After the design process has been completed we can arrange for estimates for the garden construction works to be made.

Can any size of garden benefit from being designed?

Yes. The point of good garden design is to make the most of the space you have available and ensure that the garden and house sit comfortably together. That’s what we set out to do, so you can get on with enjoying your garden.

Can we have a garden that is child, pet and wildlife friendly?

A garden which is designed to withstand a little wear and tear is great for children, pets and wildlife. If need be these wilder areas can be separated off by hedging or fencing from the more orderly parts of the garden.

Do we have to have all of the landscaping done at once?

The design work usually encompasses the entire garden but if you just want part of your garden to be landscaped then that is no problem at all. Likewise it is possible to do the upgrade over several seasons if this is preferred.

Tim Brayford has been designing gardens since 1980 and is a British Association of Landscape Industries National Award Winner. For more photos, advice & stories about my gardens please visit my website email timbrayfordgardendesign@gmail.com phone 07890 869918

Tim Brayford’s Isle of Wight Gardens 32

A successful garden will contribute significantly to our well-being and quality of life. It may play host to a broad range of flora and fauna enhancing local biodiversity and collectively benefiting the wider world environment by absorbing CO2. Here are just a few examples from gardens on the Isle of Wight and elsewhere.

Chicken of the Woods

A summer Border

Apple Blossom

Bespoke Building

Tim Brayford Landscapes were established in 1980 and we are British Association of Landscape Industries National Award Winners for Garden Design & Construction. For more photos, advice & stories about gardening please visit our website email timbrayfordlandscapes@gmail.com phone 07890 869918

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A wonderful combination of plants

Autumn tints

A contemporary prairie style planting

Tim Brayford has been designing gardens since 1980 and is a British Association of Landscape Industries National Award Winner. For more photos, advice & stories about my gardens please visit my website email timbrayfordgardendesign@gmail.com phone 07890 869918

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A stylish shed

A viniferous pergola

A species rich wildlife pond

Frosty box hedging

A Country Cottage near Ventnor by Isle of Wight Garden Designer Tim Brayford

A Country Cottage near Ventnor, Isle of Wight

Our clients lived in a quaint and charming 18^th century cottage close to the coastal resort town of Ventnor on the Isle of Wight. Prior to their ownership the property had been split into two and used as self-contained holiday lets. It was in respect of reuniting the garden to form a harmonious combination with the house that we were called in to assist with.

What purported to be lawns were in fact random areas of very lumpy coarse grasses, divided by derelict fencing , shrubs that were past their best and some very over powering Leylandii conifer hedging to complete a generally neglected, run down look. On closer inspection there were however some mature fruit trees well worthy of retaining.

Mature Apple Trees like this were well worth retaining

We proceeded to remove all the unwanted planting and graded off the ground to more even levels. New areas of natural stone paving were laid, including a secluded patio convenient for outdoor meals and a flight of steps led past some stone walling, through a timber archway to a croquet lawn and orchard. Other paths were laid to gravel and edged in recycled bricks adjacent to which we created colourful mixed herbaceous and shrub borders, these were planted with fragrant roses and climbers that scrambled over the archway and up the walls of the cottage.

Our clients needed an outdoor storage to perform a combined function of a tool shed and workshop with somewhere to season logs for their wood burning stove. They didn’t like the cheap prefabricated sheds typically found in DIY stores and liked the idea of something altogether more substantial and grand. We constructed a bespoke building in keeping with the rural surroundings. The walls were clad with black stained feather edged timber, the roof made from some lovely old terracotta peg tiles which extended out over brick paving and was supported by substantial oak posts to form a log store.

The happy couple said “ You have done a grand job, please call again soon to discuss garden maintenance”

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An owl stares out from this ancient apple tree

Cheerful June flowering foxgloves

Runner beans coming into flower

The Strawberry Field

The Strawberry Field

What went on in the strawberry field? One of our associates tells the tale:-

The sun comes out and I close my eyes as I sit on the garden bench. The warmth seeps into my arms and is chased away with a slight breeze. I sigh and reach down to the punnet and lift out a strawberry. It looks wonderful, deep red with a fresh green calyx, I bite into it and …. nothing. No burst of flavour on my tongue, no unctuous juice to run down my chin just a hard white centre. How disappointing. I was talked into buying them by No.4 son who, with the optimism of youth, thought he was getting strawberries.

When I was younger, (quite a lot younger!) I worked in the strawberry fields in early summer. It sounds idyllic, it was anything but. The first job in early spring was to put down the straw, by hand over about three acres. The boss always got the easy job, he would drive up and down the southern sloping field on his Ransom Crawler tractor stopping to chuck bales of straw off the back of the trailer. Then a couple of the blokes would come out with hay forks, split open the bales and spread them across the rows of plants. Then the three full time women, Carole, Sylvia and Ruby, would start the arduous task of ‘tucking in’. There was a knack to it, you held the leaves and hard green berries in the left hand, cupped upwards and pulled the straw around the plant with the right, swirling round to get the other side. The ladies worked on their knees, using old cushions for padding but I preferred to straddle a row of plants and work doubled over. I could go all day like this and still prefer to weed the garden this way. One year the boss obtained some cheap straw and we found out why, it was short cut barley and stuck itself into our hands and arms where it festered. Still, didn’t bother him did it!

When the berries started to ripen the part-timers joined us. I would be organizing up to twelve ladies, some of whom had never had experience of commercial picking. One year there was a crowd of ladies whose husbands were friends of the boss, they thought it would be a good laugh and lots of free berries. The first day started with a promise to be hot, I was wearing my usual jeans and a cotton shirt, with sleeves, and a bush hat. One rather vocal lady derided my choice of clothing and proceeded to strip off to shorts and a bikini top. Her friends did the same, extoling the fabulous sun. We worked for three hours before morning break. They sat in the sun and ate the damaged berries that we were allowed to keep for ourselves. I sat in the shade of a tree. By three in the afternoon it had gone a bit quiet, the banter between the ladies had stopped. By four o’clock the sun and berries had taken their toll and most of the ladies were ‘re-visiting’ their earlier meal of strawberries along the hedgerow. Shoulder blades and lower legs were a livid red and tops were being put back on with amazing caution. They walked off the field on that first day very gingerly, arms held away from the body to avoid anything touching. They didn’t come back the next day.

So the next time you buy a punnet of strawberries remember the work that’s gone into growing them, oh yes….. and make sure they’re British and in season!

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Our Isle of Wight Garden Galleries show a selection of gardens together with the plants and features found within them

A bee feasts on some apple blossom

A useful garden outbuilding

A lovely cottage garden

Beautiful Yellow Flag Iris

A frosty lichen clad staddlestone

Tim Brayford Landscapes were established in 1980 and we are British Association of Landscape Industries National Award Winners for Garden Design & Construction. For more photos, advice & stories about gardening please visit our website email timbrayfordlandscapes@gmail.com phone 07890 869918