Hello! Mind the paint on your way in because, as you might have noticed, we’ve had the decorators in. Gone is the Battleship Grey decor of the previous site, replaced with the classy tones of Antique Ivoire Blanc (or white, to you and me). In other words, we have a new website.

I should draw your attention to the smiling features of Your’s Truly on the homepage, which my husband has dubbed ‘the unacceptable face of garden design’. He also wishes to point out the new “scrolling Twitter Feed widget”, of which he’s unfathomably proud and which, as far as I can see, will enable stalkers to track my every move.

On a more serious note, the new website reflects some changes to the business which we’ve been working on for 2012.

The most important change is that, after four years of designing and building the vast majority of our gardens, from this year we are going ‘design only’. That means we will no longer be offering a landscaping service but will instead offer a project inspection service and maintain a list of trusted local contractors.

This decision means we can concentrate on our core specialism – garden design.

And on the garden design front, we’re also publicising a service we’ve run for some time without ever shouting about it – Design by Post. This will allow anyone wishing to commission us to do so wherever they are based, regardless of our location. In the past we’ve designed by post for customers in Wales and Yorkshire, but never thought of mentioning it on the web site! That’s now changed, and we hope to start some postal commissions shortly.

In the wake of our successful fixed-price plans offer (now concluded), this year has seen the busiest January we’ve ever had. We’re currently working on five separate design projects and two further design and build projects we committed to last year. We’ve also committed to 6 months’ garden writing in a local magazine, so here’s to being busy! Let’s hope it continues…

If you need us urgently, please call 01283 217941, or email info@lushgardendesign.co.uk

Having rested my writing arm during a few months well earned sabbatical I duly received the call that my prose was in demand once more. So in the bright sunshine of a Saturday afternoon I sat myself down, licked the end of my pencil, and got straight to it.

At about midnight, as I crossed the final T and dotted a stray I or two, my husband leaned over and read through my creation, which I’d tentatively headlined “February in the Garden” – not one of my better titles, I know, but it was getting late. Expecting the usual tutting about punctuation and the like I was shocked instead by a simple one line of literary criticism which would have cut any writer down to size.

“It’s going out in the March issue.”

A hurried read through confirmed my worst fear – none of it could be reworked into an article about gardening in March. So I wrote something Marchy, but to be honest my heart wasn’t really in it at 2 in the morning.

Tomorrow I’ll re-write the March article properly, but in the meantime here is The Article That Never Was (unless I dust it off for February 2013). Just imagine you’re reading it in February, in a village magazine, nestled between the article about tax advice and the ads for funeral plans and horse supplies. Enjoy!

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I have a picture of you in my mind as you sit reading: huddled up against the fire, you look up from the page to stare balefully through the window, where you’re greeted by three feet of snow piled up against the kerb.

Do I have psychic powers? Not at all – it’s just that whilst I’m sitting here in my shirt sleeves writing 400 brisk words on the subject of ‘mild winters’, it is odds-on that as soon as this magazine hits the streets we’ll be assaulted by arctic blizzards the like of which we haven’t seen since… well, last year.

After that terrible cold snap the seasons have kept us guessing again, and this year’s winter has been unseasonably mild – as much as 20° warmer at times. The widely varying temperatures are wreaking havoc in the garden. Last winter we saw usually hardy evergreens like phormium, privet, hebe and bay all killed off, while this winter our half-hardy salvias were flowering into December, and our daffodils are weeks ahead of schedule.

It’s tempting, when the weather is unusually warm, to think that spring is early and it’s time to get planting. But that’s a thought you should resist. Garden centres like nothing better than to see customers push their trolleys of spring bedding through the tills in February, because they know those same customers will be back in a few weeks once the frost has had a go at their purchases.

But there are things you can be doing in the garden. With little growth to disturb, paths can be cleaned, repaired or relaid, beds can be cleared and dug over, tools cleaned and sheds cleared. Now is the ideal time for pruning fruit trees, late-flowering shrubs, certain clematis and roses, and peach trees and nectarines should be treated for peach leaf curl. If you’re really organised, give your lawn mower a service before the spring.

February is really a month for planning. On a bright day, when the three foot drifts have melted, take a trip around your garden, notebook and pencil in hand, and consider what needs improving, reshaping or repositioning. Now is the time to indulge some new ideas – maybe a new planting scheme, or a pond or summer house. Whatever you do, plan now to help your garden evolve and you’ll reap the benefits through the summer, and hopefully for years to come.

I can’t believe the holidays are here again. Just this morning we finished typing some client emails so, bar one or two deliveries, we’re on vacation now until the New Year.

We’ve had an extremely busy twelve months. The year started off with my recovery from a broken foot, and predictions of global financial doom from practically everyone. But we persevered, and we’ve met some lovely clients for the first time whilst we’ve continued to work with some equally lovely existing ones. We’ve discovered some fantastic local suppliers who were willing to share their knowledge and skills to help us do what we do. And we’ve seen a wide range of behaviour, good and bad: from the clients who sent us home with a bag of gifts after we got so engrossed in planting their garden we hadn’t noticed night had fallen; to the clients who decided we didn’t need paying at all.

We’ve designed new things, like the parterre garden in Hulland, and we’ve brought in new services, like the Fixed-Price Plans which have kept us nicely busy this autumn, and are still available…

We are also saying goodbye to one of our trusted contractors, Dave Evans, who is moving with his family to Cornwall. Dave was one of the first contractors we met when we relocated to the east midlands, and without his skills, energy and enthusiasm I doubt we’d have had as successful a start as we did. Dave was responsible for the hard landscaping on a number of the gardens pictured on this site, and he was retained by many of our clients for subsequent work. So thank you Dave, and we wish you and your family lots of luck in your new home.

We’re hoping for a quiet Christmas break, and we’d like to wish you all a very merry Christmas, and a happy New Year.

We’ll leave you with our favourite picture of Dave, from the long hot summer of 2008…

Top photo credits: The Marmot, activescience

Hopefully you’ll have seen our link to the large garden we designed and built in Moira, Leicestershire last year. We went back this year with our little hand-held camera to take some reference video shots, and I thought you might like to see one.

The winter of 2010/11 was the worst for a generation, but it didn’t seem to have affected the new planting too much. We lost some Phormiums, Fatsias and Penstemons, but happily the rest survived unscathed.

We’ll be uploading more videos in the future – please subscribe to our YouTube Channel.

While we’re on the subject of what’s trending, here’s another infographic – this time from Lovethegarden.com – about one of our favourite topics: growing your own.

Anyone who has read the blog or seen our magazine articles locally will know we’re fully signed up to producing our own fruit, veg and eggs. The infographic goes to prove that we’re not alone. Click the graphic for the full picture.

Grow your own infographic from LoveTheGarden.com

As I wrote in our article Why Fixed Price Plans?, the trend for the last couple of years has been for homeowners to make the best of what they’ve got.

The good people at Bridgman have produced this infographic which illustrates some statistics to back this up, so I thought I’d share:

Source: Bridgman

Excuse me while I hijack the blog (this is Keith writing). I just wanted to announce that, from tomorrow, I’ll be participating in the fund-raising event that is Movember.

For those who don’t know, “During November each year, Movember is responsible for the sprouting of moustaches on thousands of men’s faces in the UK and around the world. The aim of which is to raise vital funds and awareness for men’s health, specifically prostate cancer, testicular cancer and other cancers that affect men.”

So this year I am going to be fouling the view in the Lush Gardens office with my very own moustache, and Anna’s promised not to wince too much when she catches sight of it.

I’ve set myself a modest fund-raising total of £100, and I’d be very grateful if you could donate whatever you can afford to the cause. You can donate online on my Mo Space page. If you want to go old school you can write a cheque payable to “Movember”, reference ‘Keith Barker’ and Registration Number 1330960 and send it to: Movember Europe, PO Box 68600, London, EC1P 1EF. Your support would be really appreciated.

Funds raised will help make a tangible difference to the lives of others. Through the Movember Foundation and our men’s health partners, The Prostate Cancer Charity and The Institute of Cancer Research, Movember is funding world class awareness, research, educational and support programs which would otherwise not be possible.

Thank you in advance for helping me change the face of men’s health. And be warned, I may post photos of it throughout the month…

The idea came about after reflecting on two seemingly unrelated issues. The first issue, which is affecting practically everyone, is the current state of the economy. Budgets for luxuries like garden design are being squeezed, and this year we have seen a large increase in clients wanting our plans-only service. This enables them to build their garden to our designs, at a significantly lower cost than if they had chosen our design and installation service. Other clients are choosing to have their garden design plans created now, with a view to staging the construction work over a few years.

And although the economic news is universally gloomy, demand for our services is still buoyant. With the housing market stagnant, home owners are staying put and looking to improve what they have. People are taking a medium to long term view, and are imposing their own taste on their gardens so they can enjoy them. Going ‘plans-only’ is an affordable way to achieve this.

The second issue is a perennial one: that of the autumn/winter downturn in garden design and landscaping in general. From October to February many garden designers and landscapers suffer from a marked decline in work volumes. The ironic thing, especially for garden designers, is that the autumn/winter period is ideal for creating design work, as projects can be developed and perfected without the competing pressures of landscape installation and project management to deal with.

So the thinking behind the Fixed-Price Plans offer is simply to address the two issues: to meet current demands for an affordable alternative to the full design and build service, while using our spare capacity to the full. Our Fixed-Price Plans are based on a slimmed-down version of the full design service, and they are very competitively priced, from as little as £200.

The offer runs for 4 months, from October through to the end of January, and is available in our catchment area only. You won’t get the chance to engage a professional garden designer at these prices very often, so if you’re not moving, but improving, why not give us a call?

The brief for this irregularly-shaped, three-level town garden in Ashby de la Zouch was to bring it up-to-date and open up the space. Not only was the existing layout old-fashioned but the journey through the garden was badly laid out, and felt dark and claustrophobic. A set of overpowering concrete steps led up to an area which was difficult to get past, and there was far too much paving.

The garden before was started work, with the massive, over-powering steps.

We decided on a contemporary design with warm-coloured materials and softened, straight lines. Part of our solution was to reclaim a large section of the existing paving to bring the lawn and planting areas closer to the house. This involved dropping the first level by 80cm. We decided to retain the weeping birch by excavating around it and encasing it in a wooden planter. This had the effect of opening out the space and allowing access beneath the tree, where before you had to stoop to get under it.

We replaced the remaining grey concrete paving with natural sandstone, and softened the existing concrete walls with timber cladding. A large pergola was removed to bring more light into the second level, and we relocated the children’s play equipment to a dog-leg bend at the end of the garden. This allowed us to create mixed lawn and herbaceous planting areas, with plenty of space for the children to play.

We also completely renovated the front garden planting by removing a concrete path and rope edging, and replanting with a selection of shrubs and spring-flowering herbaceous plants such as Epimedium, Euphorbia, Primula and ferns, and I shall be revisiting in the autumn to plant spring-flowering bulbs.

Here is a before and after view from the first floor of the house.

The 'before' view.

The 'after' view, with feature tree planter, new lawn and natural sandstone paving and steps.