Hiring a garden designer is a big decision and can be expensive. Here are 10 honest questions to ask before you commit, and why each one matters.
Choosing someone to design your garden is an important decision. A well designed garden will shape how you live, relax and connect with your outdoor space for years to come.
That’s why it’s worth taking the time to find a designer whose style, ethos and vision truly resonate with you. Every designer has a different approach, and the best results come from working with someone who understands how you want your garden to feel, not just how you want it to look.
Whether you dream of a naturalistic, wildlife-friendly retreat or a contemporary family garden, choosing the right designer is about finding someone who shares your values and can bring your vision to life in a way that feels authentic to you.
Here are the ten questions I think are actually worth asking, not the polite, obvious ones, but the ones that tell you how someone really works.
1. Do you draw the design by hand, or generate it on a computer?
This sounds like a small technical detail, but it isn’t. A computer-generated render can look impressive and finished before a single spade goes in the ground but that polish can also lock a design in too early, before it’s had room to breathe and change. Personally, I still draw every garden by hand, for exactly that reason: a pencil lets an idea shift and improve as it’s being worked out, not just get illustrated once it’s already decided.
Either approach can produce a good garden. But it’s worth knowing which one you’re getting, and why.
2. Are you designing my whole garden?
Find out what the designer will incorporate in the design. It’s important at the garden design brief stage to highlight what you want designing and what can be left alone. It is good to listen to a designers ideas but feel confident to say,’I want this tree keeping’ or ‘I want the garden to feel lived in’ not just a show garden
3. Can I see gardens you designed a few years ago, not just freshly finished ones?
Anyone can make a new garden look good in a photo taken the week it’s completed. The real test is what it looks like two or three years later. A designer who’s confident in their planting will be glad to show you an older project; if all you’re shown is day-one photography, that’s worth noticing. I’d rather show a client an older garden that’s filled out and matured than a brand-new one still finding its feet.
4. Will I be working with you directly, or handed between different people?
Larger studios often split the work, one person for the initial design, another for project management, someone else again for planting. That’s not necessarily a problem, but it does mean your garden passes through several sets of hands and interpretations along the way. I work with every client myself, start to finish, the same person who listens to your brief is the one drawing the design and the one back for aftercare. Ask which model you’re getting, and decide which suits you.
5. How much hard landscaping would you actually recommend for my garden?
A good answer to this should never be “as much as the budget allows.” Paving, decking and walling all have their place, but they should be earning that place, not filling space that planting or lawn could do more interesting work with. If a designer’s answer is entirely about materials and none of it is about plants, that tells you something about where their instincts lie.
6. What will you actually ask me before you start designing?
The design should come from a real conversation, how you use the garden, who else uses it, what you want to feel when you’re out there,not just measurements and a site visit. If the first meeting is mostly about budget and materials rather than how you live, the design that follows will likely reflect that. Feel confident the designer has taken time to listen to you and engage in your ideas. It is a garden designer’s job to understand your vision and use this to then create a garden that is for you, not following trends.
7. How will the garden change over its first few years?
This is one of the most revealing questions you can ask, because it tells you whether someone is designing for a photograph or designing for a garden. Naturalistic planting, grasses and perennials layered together rather than planted individually, genuinely gets better with time, filling out and settling in. A designer should be able to describe that journey to you clearly, not just describe the finished “reveal.”
8. What’s included in the design fee, and what costs extra?
Ask this plainly and expect a plain answer. Site visits, plant sourcing, project management, and aftercare visits are sometimes included and sometimes billed separately and it varies a lot between designers. Get it in writing before you commit, not after the first invoice.
9. Do you offer any aftercare, or is your involvement over once it’s planted?
A garden needs a bit of guidance in its first year or two while it establishes. Ask whether aftercare visits are part of the service, and how often. If the relationship ends the day the last plant goes in, you’re on your own for exactly the period when the garden needs the most understanding of what was intended.
10. Can you talk me through a project that didn’t go entirely to plan?
This one tends to catch people off guard and that’s rather the point. Every experienced designer has had a plant fail, a site condition threw up a surprise, or a client changed their mind halfway through. How someone talks about that tells you far more than a polished portfolio ever will: whether they’re honest, how they problem solve, and whether they take responsibility rather than deflect it.
The short version
Choosing a garden designer is a personal choice, most work the same way from initial consultation, to design brief and then presentation of the masterplan.If you’d like to talk through your own garden and how I’d approach it, I’d love to hear from you.
