THE GARDEN COMPANY
LTD - COMBINING
CREATIVITY WITH PASSION
FOR BEAUTIFUL GARDENS
James Scott is MD and Principal Designer of The Garden Company Ltd, a design-and-build practice based in Hertfordshire and
serving clients in the surrounding counties and North London. Since establishing the company in 1991, James has collaborated
successfully on many projects with fellow designers, architects and property developers, delivering a large number of award-
winning projects, domestic and commercial, large and small.
In James’s words, ‘This is a great industry to work in. We are in the privileged position of creating beautiful spaces for people
to enjoy. A lot of that is brought about by sheer hard work. Some of that hard work has been automated already and even more
will be automated in years to come. However, I strongly believe that the sparks of creativity and passion for gardens that lie at
the heart of every beautiful place we create cannot be automated. We will continue to listen intently to our clients, understand
what they want and need from us, and use our expertise to create it. If this was easy, it would have been automated long ago!’.
All the Garden Company’s design work is led by the clients’ requirements, combined with a ‘sense of place’. The resultant
gardens tend to have a strong underlying structure with a natural, organic feel rather than anything that is overly stylised.
Browsing through a couple of recent Garden Company projects illustrates these design principles …
Threshing Barn - Winner of National
BALI Award
This garden is situated high in the
Chilterns, an Area of Outstanding Natural
Beauty. The owners wanted to create
a contemporary garden that remained
sympathetic to the traditional ‘barn’ style
of the house and farmland setting. As
passionate cooks, the owners also wanted
Everest trees demarking the start of an
orchard/meadow area – where there is
a larger vegetable garden and displays
of wildflowers at various times of the
year. The silver-grey, black and white
hardscaping was chosen to enhance
a colourful planting palette and to
‘showcase’ the flowers and foliage at their
best’.
to grow more of their own food at home.
‘Our overall aim was to harmonise the
house, garden and countryside through
sensitive use of hardscaping and
planting. We constructed two terraces
from black and contrasting silver-grey
granite. A walkway leads to a more
traditional brick path inside a kitchen
garden near the house, with oak raised
beds. Large planting borders surround
the terraces with swathes of herbaceous
plants and grasses that sit well in the
surrounding countryside. A large lawn
defines the formal area of the garden
before giving way to a line of Malus
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Landscape & Urban Design Issue 34 2018
Westmeon - SGD Awards Finalist
This family garden is situated in Kings
Langley in Hertfordshire. Our clients
had a mature garden with some existing
hedging and specimen shrubs and trees.
The brief was to create a stylish family
garden with a large entertaining area
including a swimming pool and pool
building.
‘Our design concept was to create a
garden that appeared to be hewn out of
the surrounding landscape.