Garden designer Andrew Duff can clearly see it in his mind: the orchard of apples, pears, cherries, and quinces, the beautiful formal porch, and the little winding paths that lead to the adjacent landscaped meadows.
But in fact, it will be a month until his current project – a four-acre garden in Oxfordshire – is complete. And with 15 more gardens to be designed and worked on this summer, even in the shade, it’s feeling the heat.
“I’ve been a garden designer for 30 years. This week, for the first time, I turned down a client,” he told Foreman. “This was a huge problem for me because I never refused. I always get them in at some point.”
There is an “unprecedented” level of demand for garden designers in the UK right now, according to the Society of Garden Designers. The latest snapshot of Britain’s landscape market, posted this month by Professional landscaping The magazine revealed a 166% increase in monthly inquiries, with garden designers simultaneously reporting a 140% increase in sales.
Lynne Marcus, president of the Gardeners Association, was stunned by the request this year: “I’ve been in practice for over 20 years, never knowing it was busy,” she said, amid reports that designers and landscaping contractors were booked months in advance. “Anyone who orders a garden now will be disappointed. We are talking about summer 2022 before the garden is probably ready, and that is assuming it goes along with a very steep design.”
Garden designers agree that the reason is shutdown and work from home. Duff has noted “enormous changes” in how parks are used over the past year. “Because a lot of people work from home, they spend more time in the garden, spending 10 minutes with a cup of coffee there between Zoom meetings. It’s an important place to relax,” he said.
In Cambridgeshire, award-winning garden designer Robert Parker has a waiting list of up to two months for potential clients, managing 20 projects. “In the first year of lockdown, people probably thought they could do the work themselves. And then they realized they actually couldn’t, and they want expert advice before they spend more money on the wrong plants or the wrong kind of material.”
He says he has seen demand triple in the past 12 months. Many of his new clients found refuge in their gardens at the height of the pandemic, reconnecting with nature while working from home. “They are people on a modest budget, who would not necessarily have decided to hire a garden designer in the past. Now, in their minds, the garden is more of a priority than it used to be.”
Thanks to the recent boom in home prices, suburban homeowners are finding it better to spend their surplus money on their garden, he says, “I think some of the people who can’t make that jump from a three-family to a four-family house, because it’s so much more expensive now, are thinking: We have to make the most of what we have.”
The designers Foreman She talked that artificial lawns and grasses are out of fashion and the popularity of “natural” ponds and plants that encourage biodiversity and wildlife has increased.
They said that having a space for recreation in the garden is high on almost everyone’s list of priorities.
In the suburb of Hampton, near the River Thames, elementary school teacher Julie Kidzon is looking forward to enjoying the rest of summer in her newly designed garden. “We went for the laurel trees and Lollipop Bay – we wanted a contemporary garden with plants that last all year,” she said.
Kidszone said she felt so privileged to have a garden during the lockdown, and found gardening a treat. “But it wasn’t very nice to look at, and we spent the whole summer in it last year.” This year, she decided to use money she’d normally spend on vacation to transform it, and found the advice of her garden designer, Penelope Jane, invaluable. “I didn’t want to waste money on plants that then die. She was able to tell us things like what height a plant could grow to, which ones would spread widely, and which would like shade or sun.”
Kidszone said she can’t wait for her garden furniture to arrive so she can invite friends for barbecues. “It would be a nice space to entertain.”