Tree buying at fabulous trade nurseries

29th October 2024

Buying mature trees & topiary for clients is a real perk of my job. I get to go to wonderful places & buy fantastic specimen trees – some so enormous we have to plant them with the aid of a crane. Last week I went with Tom to find trees & topiary for my Bath project currently being built by his team. This is one of my drawings of my design. It is a courtyard garden behind one of the fabulous classical Georgian facades at this elegant townhouse just near the Royal Crescent. My aim is for the garden to …

A new Cotswold garden design

25th January 2024

A belated happy new year to you! I had a lovely break with family but that already seems like a distant memory. I’ve lots of really interesting projects on my books at present & am ploughing my way through my project queue. This new garden design is near Bath. It’s a Cotswold farmhouse on a sloping site so is a tad tricky. I do love to play around with levels though so the before & after will be great. I will keep you posted as it progresses. Here are some of my garden plans & illustrations… A couple of my …

Designing a new topiary garden

31st March 2023

You might recognise this garden if you know my work…this is part of the Secret Garden at Pip’s Place. Have a look here – https://www.joannealderson.com/portfolio/large-gardens-estates/pips-place/. We bought the big taxus topiary beehives in Belgium a few years ago as part of phase 1 & now we are going to add to them. Ginni asked to meet up to discuss this garden & pondered making some changes. She told me how expensive it was to maintain with mowing etc & sadly all the Ilex crenata edging (supposedly the wonder plant replacement for buxus) had died! My immediate thought was to create …

Knot gardens, parterres, topiary & me

25th May 2022

I have always loved a topiary garden. As far back as I can remember I have loved all the architectural & quirky clipped shapes talented gardeners have fashioned from their imaginations. Have you seen the topiary at Levels Hall? isn’t it fabulous! … I now love to design my own knot gardens & parterres or add a selection of quirky topiary pieces to compliment a building or add amazing character to a garden. Above is one of my drawings for the front of a Georgian mansion in Buckinghamshire. The existing driveway is huge & the building really impressive but slightly …

Revisiting the walled garden with parterre

16th June 2021

I’m madly busy as usual with so many schemes on my books at the moment. I feel very honoured to be asked to design new gardens for some fantastic projects – thanks to all of you if you are reading this. Between site visits I popped in to see one I designed a while back on a glorious sunny day. I actually designed this walled garden back in 2012 & I had a lovely time walking around chatting with my happy client Rebecca & catching up. I felt so proud! Not sure if I am supposed to say that but …

On site today in Buckinghamshire

25th June 2020

Well lockdown has eased so I am back on site & visiting clients – both old & new. It’s been relatively easy thankfully as we can stay outside; that said I got soaked to the skin last Thursday & Friday as it lashed down – yuk! Today I was in Buckinghamshire visiting Pip’s Place – a large garden design & build project of several acres where phase 2 has just got underway. It’s a lovely project up in the Chilterns – so – it’s cold & blustery in winter & today in mid June we absolutely roasted in 31 degree …

Buying topiary for my clients

8th April 2019

I love my job as a garden designer. I say it all the time because it is true. One of my favourite things after actually drawing is shopping for trees. I was in Belgium last week looking for trees for a few projects. Unfortunately the weather was pretty dreadful but other than that it was great to visit my favourite nursery again. I went for two days – the first day I travelled with Rob Jones of The Garden Design Co & our client Ginni then I stayed in Brussels & met with Tom of TS Landscapes the next day …

A front garden being created

28th June 2017

There’s a lot going on at the moment. I have several schemes being built & quite few on my drawing board too. It’s all quite exciting particularly as they are all quite different. My client took these photo’s & sent them to me yesterday. She is delighted & so are we. I am back on site on Friday & looking forward to seeing further progress. This is part of a very large scheme that has taken a while to get under way due to several things – one being awaiting the house completion! A row of mature elm trees are …

A fantastic buying trip last week!

21st September 2015

My clients flew over to meet me in Belgium last week to select large yew topiary specimens & some trees for their large garden. It was a great day as I’d not visited before – only bought via emailed photos. It makes all the difference actually being able to look at trees in three dimensions & relate to them & we all had a super time deciding which ones would work best. My sketch for this topiary walk is below… There were so many to choose from but we have tagged 24 which we will whittle down a little for …

Formal Country Garden

4th July 2014

I designed a formal country garden for my clients Anne & Andrew back in 2008 for their substantial plot in Berkshire. The grounds include paddocks for their daughters’ horses where they wanted some large heritage trees such as oak & walnut. It was quite fun too as Andrew’s hobby is flying helicopters so I had to consider a suitable landing spot. Here is the plan I drew – It is now quite mature & when I visited a couple of days ago was looking just fabulous – The lakes weren’t complete last time I visited so it was wonderful to …

Chelsea Award Winning Garden Design