We make places
that feel older
than they are.
Gardens, terraces and grounds drawn slowly for private houses, vineyards and small hotels — then looked after for as long as you want us in them.
Where we have been
6 gardens, one barn.
Swipe sideways on a phone — the rail keeps its rhythm with snap points instead of shrinking to fit.
The way we think about it
A garden is not a project. It is a relationship that happens to start with drawings.
We spend the first month doing very little: sitting on the site at different hours, digging holes to see what the soil is actually made of, watching where the water goes when it rains, asking which window you look out of most.
Only then do we draw — by hand first, because a pencil is slower than a mouse and slowness is the point. What comes out is usually simpler than what people expect, and takes longer to build than they hoped.
“It should look like nobody designed it, and like nobody could have got there without one.”
Eleanor Marlow
Founding partner
01 —
Hampshire
,
2024
Ashcombe House
A Georgian rectory carrying two centuries of accumulated decisions. We took most of them out and rebuilt the walled courtyard around the one surviving mulberry, which now shades the only place anybody actually sits.
Ground
2.1
In hand
31
Species
84
Walk through it →
02 —
Dorset
,
2023
The Salt Court
Four hundred metres from open water, on a slope that had already lost two gardens to the wind. Everything planted here has to survive salt, and everything built here has to survive being adored in August and forgotten in January.
Walk through it →
What we do
Five kinds of work, and a long habit of coming back.
Landscape design
Masterplanning for grounds and their approaches: survey, levels, drainage, circulation, hard materials and the structural planting that outlives everything else on site.
Outdoor living
Terraces, courtyards, outdoor kitchens, pool surrounds and shade structures, detailed in stone, timber and lime render, with the lighting drawn in from the first week.
Planting design
Species-level schemes drawn for succession across twelve months and maturity at year seven, with a sourcing list and a maintenance calendar your gardener can follow.
Pools & water
Swimming ponds, tanks and rills, set into ground that has to look untouched the summer after the diggers leave.
Stewardship
One long visit a year, an editing session with your gardener and a revised planting plan. Open to any garden we have drawn, for as long as it stands.
From first walk to seventh summer
It takes about three years, and then it never ends.
1
The long walk
Soil pits, drainage, and an argument about the view.
Weeks one to six
2
Pencil first
Hand drawings, a material board you can hold, one honest budget conversation.
Months two to five
3
In the ground
Setting out, levels, lighting, and a planting plan named to the cultivar.
Months five to thirty
4
Coming back
Every year after, for as long as you want us in the garden.
Ongoing
Taking on six gardens a year
Come and stand in it with us.
Send the address, a few photographs and one sentence about what you would like to be doing out there in five years. We answer everything within the week, usually with more questions.