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Author Archives: George Smith

Summer Inspiration for a Garden Re-design

Embracing Summer’s Beauty to Help Create a Garden of your Dreams

by George Smith / on 27th July 2023 / in Blog, environment, garden design, Gardens

A balmy Summers evening, with its hazy undertones and perhaps nostalgic childhood memories maybe the perfect time to find inspiration for your garden’s re-design.

As the sun bathes our outdoor spaces, we are invited to step outside, indulge in the sensory delights and uncover what truly brings us joy in our gardens.

Our gardens should be just as integral to our home as much as our indoor space is. The link between indoors and outdoors should feel effortless. As much a place to rest, relax and socialise as our bed, sofa or dining table is!

A garden can awaken our senses with sights, sounds, smells, and textures. When contemplating a garden re-design, let the splendour of Summer guide your plans and decisions.

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re-wilding your garden

Re-wilding your garden – what difference can you make?

by George Smith / on 27th July 2023 / in Blog, environment, Gardens, planting, plants, Ponds, Tips, trees, Wildlife

How to continue your re-wilding journey

Many of us have now set aside or made changes to some parts of our gardens to make them friendlier to wildlife.

Leaving a corner to go wild with brambles or nettles, ‘No-mow May’ or leaving leaf litter and plant debris under hedges or in beds are all ways to attract insects, small mammals and birds to our gardens. For many of us, this is just the first step on a re-wilding journey.

The true principles of re-wilding go well beyond transforming all or most of our garden into a haven for nature, however. Re-wilding means extending beyond and across boundaries to neighbouring gardens and green spaces.

To make re-wilding a reality and also a success, what’s needed is scale and size; conjoined areas of land to create a habitat for a pool of biodiversity. This is the challenge for home-owners and Garden Designers alike.

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lawn care

For the Love of Lawns

by George Smith / on 2nd May 2023 / in Blog, climate, environment, estates, garden design, Gardens, lawncare, Wildlife

We Brits love our lawns.

In the early 17th Century only the well-healed Landowners could afford human labour to scythe and hand-weed large areas of grass. Since then, a perfectly manicured lawn has been associated with wealth and success. The aspiration of every home-owner – or is it?

Over the years we’ve become conditioned to a traditional grass lawn being a central feature of our gardens. Lawncare has become a very British obsession.

Looking to the future and the increasing desire and need to lead a greener and more sustainable lifestyle, maybe it’s time to change? Perhaps it’s time to rethink what we want to achieve in our gardens and the role the lawns have to play in our enjoyment of these valuable outside spaces.

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A Wild Garden

5 More Steps to Going Wild in your Garden

by George Smith / on 28th April 2023 / in Blog, environment, Gardens, meadows

A sequel to 5 Steps to Going Wild in your Garden, because there is always more we can do.

With biodiversity declining at an alarming rate it can feel like the problem is too big for us to solve alone. But just imagine if we all did a little bit more … just like a waterfall is made up of many droplets of water. Big change can happen when we all come together.

And a wild garden is one of the easiest ways we can make a difference to the biodiversity in our communities.

Read on to learn more and decide which steps will work for you and your garden.

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GreenArt Gardeners

Choosing a Gardener

by George Smith / on 5th April 2023 / in Blog, estates, Gardens, large gardens, lawncare

Does one size fit all?

We’re often asked what kind of gardens our Care and Development team looks after. The truth is they are very varied. We love developing New Build gardens just as much as nurturing large established private estates in acres of land.

The reality is that we treat every garden with the same level of care and attention. All have access to the same diverse range of horticultural skills that our experienced Landscape Gardeners offer.

So what should you consider when choosing a Landscape Gardening company to look after your garden? Here are the things we believe are important when evaluating gardening services:

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5 Steps to Going Wild in your Garden

by George Smith / on 3rd March 2023 / in Blog, climate, environment, garden design, Gardens, meadows, planting, Ponds, trees, Watering, Wildlife

FACT: Gardens cover an area more than twice the size of all our national nature reserves.

FACT: One in seven of our wildlife species are heading for extinction and half are in decline.

FACT: 46% of Europe has tree cover compared with only 13% in the UK

While decisions are being made across Britain by members of the Rewilding Network about rewilding their land, as gardeners, home-owners, garden designers and landscapers, the decisions we make now can make a massive difference.

If every garden in Britain was made just a little bit wilder, more carbon could be absorbed, biodiversity increased and the impacts of climate change, like flooding, reduced.

That’s got to be a good reason to go a bit wild, so what can you do?

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RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch 27-29 January 2023

by George Smith / on 25th January 2023 / in Blog, environment, Gardens, Wildlife, winter

Why you need to take part in the Big Garden Birdwatch

Birds in the sky and on the land around us are one of the most important indicators of the health of our surroundings. They live on the plants, insects and animals that grow on our wild and cultivated land. Birds are in trouble and we must help.

In the last 50 years the UK has lost nearly 40 million birds across many different species. Birds that live in upland areas, woodland birds, wetland birds, those that live on farmland and garden birds – all are declining. So how can we keep track of what’s happening and what can we all do to stop the decline?

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Low Maintenance doesn’t mean No Maintenance!

by George Smith / on 10th November 2022 / in Blog, garden design, Gardens, planting, plants, pots, Tips

It may not come as much surprise to hear that we are often asked for a ‘low maintenance’ garden when it comes to designing green spaces.

This may be due to many reasons; being new to gardening, having a young family, older age, restricted mobility or simply not having enough time.

For a keen gardener, tending to borders and lawns is a much-enjoyed pastime, but for a lot of people managing a garden can often feel overwhelming and all too often a chore, rather than a pleasure.

Here we discuss some low-maintenance garden design considerations without having to turn your garden into a concrete jungle!

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Babylon Nursery Garden Ideas

Blooming Marvelous Planting Scheme Ideas

by George Smith / on 25th May 2022 / in borders, garden design, Gardens, planting, plants

As a Trainee Designer at GreenArt, part of my job is to work with our Garden Design team to create planting schemes for our clients. These can be schemes to refresh an existing area of a garden or as part of a completely new Garden Design.

I recently visited our local wholesale nursery Babylon Nursery  to source herbs for a customer’s vegetable garden. Whilst there I took the opportunity to have a look around and see if anything in bloom caught my eye. Here’s what I found that sparked some fresh ideas for planting schemes.

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