Garden Design & Landscaping in Richmond

The housing is exceptionally varied: Georgian and early Victorian terraces around the Green and Richmond Hill, solid Victorian and Edwardian family houses on the roads towards Kew and Sheen, mansion flats and mews conversions in the centre, and larger houses with mature grounds nearer the Park and Petersham Road.

Slope is the defining feature in a lot of TW10. Gardens rising or falling away from the house need retaining structures, steps and drainage designed together, and often benefit from being cut into terraces so the usable space is level rather than tilted. Where the fall runs towards the building, water management is not optional.

The other constant is trees and setting. Richmond Park, the Terrace Gardens and the riverside bring a mature canopy into many gardens, along with squirrels, parakeets and — near the Park — the real possibility of deer taking an interest in new planting. Conservation area designation, listed building consent and tree preservation orders all affect what can be built and how, particularly at the front of a house and on boundary walls.

On a sloping Richmond garden the first design decision is where the level ground goes. Usually that means a terrace at the house, sized properly for a table, then one or two further levels held by retaining walls with generous, comfortable steps between them — deep treads and low risers, so the garden is easy to walk rather than something you climb.

Views are worth taking seriously here. A garden that looks up towards the hill or borrows the canopy of the Park can be framed with pleached trees, hedging and carefully placed gaps rather than closed in with fencing. Conversely, gardens overlooked by taller neighbours need height in the planting and the boundary treatment rather than more paving.

With older and listed houses, restraint reads as quality: one stone rather than three, brickwork matched to the existing walls, York-stone-style flags near a Georgian façade, timber and metalwork detailed to suit the period. Where planning, listed building or conservation consent is likely to be needed, we would rather tell you at the drawing stage than discover it mid-build.

Planting near the Park needs to be chosen with wildlife in mind — deer and squirrels will edit an over-optimistic scheme for you — and irrigation makes a real difference on a free-draining, sloping plot where water runs off before it soaks in.

Slope and access make Richmond builds technical. We excavate and set out levels first, then build the structures that hold the garden together: retaining walls, foundations, steps, brickwork and pointing, drainage runs and soakaways, all by our own groundworks team.

Paving, pathways and tiling follow — natural stone, porcelain or reconstituted stone — with falls, thresholds and slot drains resolved so water leaves the terrace and never approaches the house. Fencing, gates, railings, screens, pergolas and stores are made by our own joinery and metalwork teams so the detailing suits the building rather than a catalogue.

Finally the soft landscaping: soil improvement, trees, hedging, borders, turf or artificial grass, irrigation, and garden lighting cabled while the ground is open. Written quote first, regular updates throughout, and one company responsible from start to finish.

More than twenty years of designing and building gardens across London, including the sloping, walled and conservation-constrained sites Richmond is full of.

A completely in-house service — design through to planting — carried out by experienced teams who work together on every job.

Written quotes for all work, a prompt start, careful working on constrained sites, and the quality of workmanship that shows up in retaining walls, steps and brickwork long after the planting has filled out.