Field book — opened 17 August 2026
Garden design and build, Stroud
This page opens to the month you arrive in. It is August: Miscanthus coming into flower, Phlomis already in seed, mist due back in the valley by the month's end. We design gardens to be worth photographing in all twelve.
Fig. 01–04 — one viewpoint, year one
One planting scheme in a Stroud valley garden, photographed from the same tripod position through its first year. October and January are not the off-season here; they are the design.
Cut back in late February; Sesleria and the first bulbs move before anything else.
Full flush — Salvia ‘Caradonna’ and Knautia carrying the colour, the grasses still green.
Low sun behind Miscanthus and Molinia. The border’s best month, not its last.
Hoar frost on Phlomis and Echinacea. Nothing is cut until the new growth asks.
The practice
Not a phrase on a list — a way of drawing. Every scheme we plant is a naturalistic perennial planting composed for the Cotswold year, designed to hold its shape in January as well as July.
A third of every scheme is chosen for its winter skeleton — grasses, standing seedheads, clipped evergreen forms. What holds the border in January is what holds the eye in July.
Something is always arriving. Bulbs come up through the emerging perennials; Aster and Miscanthus are held back for the months most planting has given up on.
Nothing is cut down in autumn. The faded architecture of Phlomis, Eryngium and Hylotelephium is the winter garden — it was drawn that way, and it stands until late February.
Every plan starts as a measured drawing — see the method.
Entries from the field book
Three gardens, each shown in the month that tests it rather than the month that flatters it.
Nine metres by seven, walled on three sides — courtyard garden design photographed from the landing window in the month a courtyard has nowhere to hide. Clipped yew, reclaimed limestone setts, Hakonechloa standing in its parchment phase. The bones were drawn first; February is their audit.
9.0 × 7.0 m — walled on three sides
A perennial planting scheme run along a falling boundary and read against the valley mist. Molinia and Sanguisorba backlit at eight in the morning; the boots in the corner belong to the October round of first-year photographs.
40 m run — photographed monthly, year one
A natural stone terrace in reclaimed Cotswold limestone, laid to falls and left unsealed — it darkens after rain, which is when we photograph it. The planting is pulled tight into the joints: Erigeron, thyme, self-sown Verbena.
Laid to falls — 1:80
Method
Every garden here is drawn before it is dug. Garden design, full landscape build and the first year’s care, in the order it happens — the same hand on the survey, the drawing and the spade.
We walk the garden with you, then measure it properly — levels, aspect, where the frost pools and the wind funnels.
The design is drawn to scale before anything is priced or dug; you see precisely what you are agreeing to.
Every plant placed and named on paper, in our own hand — and the plan is yours to keep.
We build it, tend its first year of establishment, and return in year three. That visit is part of every build.
Est. 2021 · Drawn at 1:50 · Insured — £5m public liability
Kept with the photographs
“The grasses in December are the reason we chose them.”
“The planting plan hangs framed in our hallway. Visitors ask about it before they have seen the garden.”
“They came back in January to photograph the frost. We hadn’t asked. The border had.”
August 2026 — Stroud
Tell us where the garden is and what you would like it to become. We’ll come and walk it with you — whatever the month says.
The studio keeps Monday to Friday, 08:00–16:30. We design and build across Stroud and the Five Valleys.
We would rather walk the garden with you than describe it.
