How much do garden designers cost in the UK?
Garden designers in Glasgow will typically charge less than garden designers in somewhere like London, but there are a few key guidelines that can help you work things out. For smaller projects up to around £10k construction cost you can expect to pay around 20% (in addition) to the garden designer, and this will drop to around 15% and then 10% as budget increases. Other garden designers and horticultural consultants charge an hourly rate which will start from around £60 per hour. Bear in mind that part of the job of a garden designer is making you savings on materials and ensuring the right plants are chosen first time, so they may well cover their costs as well as provide you with the benefit of their expertise.
If for example you are looking to commission a garden design project in Glasgow, you may be tempted to look first to a landscape gardener, but bear in mind that this will give the landscape gardener little motivation to spend time on this part of the project, even if he is a qualified garden designer (which most aren’t). The best way to go about things is to engage a garden designer first (or a horticultural consultant trained in garden design), and separately (or with the help of the garden designer) engage a landscape gardener to carry out the construction. This way you have experts dealing with each stage of the process, each being paid for and therefore motivated to do the very best job for you.
When it comes to the planting plan for your garden design, be that in Glasgow or elsewhere, this is another area that requires expertise to ensure that you get an imaginative planting plan that will give you year-round interest, will not be too onerous in terms of maintenance, and will ensure that you buy the right plants first time. If you have gone down the route of using a landscape gardener for the process up to this point, this is often a good time to look to a garden designer to produce a planting plan for you.
Buying plants from a garden centre is another area where you can make significant savings by engaging a professional. Many people repeatedly buy the wrong plants for their garden and need to replace them – there is no shame in this, there is a lot to know to ensure you’re choosing the right plants! A garden designer will be able to provide you planting plans to ensure you select the correct species, and the correct amount of them so your garden does not become overcrowded, and they can then source the plants for you. This is a service not just available in Glasgow but wherever you are!
Tom Angel of Angel Horticulture Ltd is a qualified garden designer and chartered horticulturist based in Glasgow, specialising in creating planting plans, sourcing plants and providing planting services, as well as consultancy services including japanese knotweed surveys.