New Year, New Improved Website!

Happy New Year!

It's -2ºC outside as I write this. With everything looking grey and miserable in the garden there's no better time to dust off the old website and add pictures from last year's work to the gallery.

Looking through the selected highlights it brings home how quickly the seasons change. Some of the shots from February and March last year look grim and depressing, but as soon as some of the plants get going it lifts everything. Have a look through and let me know what you think.

We've also made two significant changes to the way we do business this year. Firstly we've decided to stop offering a hard landscaping service, opting instead to recommend trusted landscapers to our customers. This decision wasn't one we made lightly, but last year we found that we were turning down design projects because we couldn't fit them in. Hard landscaping and project management is particularly time consuming, especially if the weather is against you, which it was a couple of times last year (see pic above from last summer!). We felt that we'd be better off focussing more on the design work and leave the hard landscaping headaches to someone else!

The second change is really us building on what proved to be a successful service last year - the online design service. We are very happy with the service we've developed, and now seems like the perfect time to push it forward. We didn't advertise it at all last year, except on the website. This year we will be more proactive and put some weight behind it nationally. We've added a new section to the website specifically for the online design service, including sample plans from successful projects.

Local Food Grants

I was invited recently to a presentation at Woodcote Primary School in Ashby. The school has a gardening club and the teachers have applied for a National Lottery Grant, through the Local Food Grant scheme, to create a fully functioning kitchen garden.

The Local Food scheme is a £50 million programme aimed at supporting a variety of food-related projects which will help make locally grown food accessible to local communities.

The aim of the Woodcote scheme is two-fold: to get the children fully involved in all aspects of growing their own produce; and to sell the produce to parents and local residents.

I think this is a great idea, and I hope Woodcote are successful with their application.

Sod's Law

One of the biggest challenges of being a garden designer is overcoming the seasons. You only have to compare the level of work we had in the spring with that of today to see that. That's not to say we're not busy - we do a lot of garden maintenance work at this time of year, as well as planting spring bulbs which weren't available during the summer.

But there's no avoiding the fact that spring and summer are manic for garden designers. Ideally, we'd like to spread the workload evenly throughout the year. The main problem with that is getting people to concentrate on their gardens during autumn and winter. 

It's understandable that most people shut the door, mentally and physically, on their gardens when it's cold and dark and the grass doesn't need mowing. But if you think about it, autumn and winter are the perfect time to start planning for next year. Surveying and designing can be done without the pressure of knowing that it's perfect planting weather outside, and you really should be making the most of it. Everything can be agreed, ordered and raring to go as soon as the weather allows in the new year. 

That's how it would be in a perfect world. In reality the phone doesn't start ringing until easter or once Gardeners' World starts on the TV, which ever comes first.

Welcome to Lush Gardens

Hooray! Another blog!

The aim of this one is simply to jot down thoughts and articles related to what we do - garden design. Hopefully someone will find it of interest...