Garden Landscaping
The structural side of a garden - terracing, walling, steps and drainage - built from the design drawings, not improvised on site.
Read more about Garden LandscapingGarden Design St Albans
Superior Garden Design St Albans
Design-led gardens for St Albans and Hertfordshire - masterplanned, landscaped and planted by one studio.
A garden gets one chance to be designed well, and it is before anyone orders paving. We start every project on paper - measured survey, soil pits, a masterplan you can argue with - and then build and plant exactly what was drawn. Most of our work is the full journey from tired lawn to finished garden; all of it is for people who want the outside of their home to be thought about as carefully as the inside.
Request A Free Garden Consultation
A few details about the garden is all we need - we will be in touch to arrange a time to come and see it. No charge for the visit and no hard sell afterwards.
- Fully insured
- Free first consultation
- Design and build, one contract
- St Albans based
The Business Behind It
Who Runs Superior Garden Design
He writes everything down.
Superior Garden Design is run by Mark, and the first thing most people notice about him is how organised he is. Everything gets written down. Each working day is planned the night before, and every garden goes through the same steps in the same order, so problems are caught on paper rather than on site.
That suits the work. A designed garden takes months from first visit to planting, and a long job only stays calm if somebody is running it properly. Albert, in the office, answers the phone and looks after the online side and the admin. With that covered, Mark can keep a close eye on every job on site and every quote waiting to be arranged.
Mark is particular about the standard of fitting, too. Nobody joins the team without being vetted, and the hiring process is not the usual one: candidates do test projects, and many go on to extra training and courses with suppliers. Supplier relationships get real attention as well, because suppliers who know you well tend to help on both price and delivery.
- Every Garden Starts On Paper
- Design First Every Garden Starts On Paper
- Initial Garden Consultations
- Free Initial Garden Consultations
- Design Through To Planting
- One Studio Design Through To Planting
- Itemised Costs Before Work
- Written Itemised Costs Before Work
Services
Three Disciplines, One Studio
Most finished gardens draw on all three. The point of keeping them under one roof is that the wall, the border in front of it and the lighting above it get designed as a single thought.
Planting Design
Planting plans drawn species by species for your soil and aspect, then set out and planted by the people who designed them.
Read more about Planting Design
Outdoor Living Spaces
Kitchens, pergolas, lighting and heat, planned as one scheme so the cables and gas runs go in before the paving does.
Read more about Outdoor Living Spaces
Why It Matters Here
Garden Design In St Albans Starts With The Ground
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Clay-with-flints on top, chalk underneath
Most of the city sits on a cap of heavy, flinty, slightly acid clay over the Chiltern chalk, with the chalk breaking through in the Ver valley. The clay grows roses and hydrangeas magnificently and drowns Mediterranean planting; the chalk does the reverse. We dig test pits on every survey because in this city the answer changes street by street.
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Winter water has to be designed for
Clay-with-flints holds rain the way a roof holds it - badly, and towards your terrace. Falls, drainage and soakaways are engineered into our schemes from the first drawing, which is why the lawns we lay are still lawns in February.
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Conservation areas cover more of the city than people expect
Fishpool Street, St Michael's, the cathedral quarter and a string of other pockets are conservation areas, where garden trees are protected by a six-week notice rule and boundary changes draw attention. Half our job is knowing the rules; the better half is designing gardens that never need to fight them.
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Victorian terraces with rear-access arithmetic
The streets around the centre hide long, narrow gardens reached through the house or a shared alley. Every material has to arrive in carryable units, which we plan for at design stage - it changes what gets specified, not just how it gets delivered.
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Marshalswick, Chiswell Green and the 1930s plot
The city's interwar estates come with proper-sized gardens - often 40 metres of underused lawn behind a wide semi. These are the most rewarding plots in St Albans to masterplan, because the space is already there; it has just never been given a structure.
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Mature trees that outrank everyone's plans
Batchwood's beeches, Clarence Park's limes and a citywide scatter of protected oaks shade real gardens, mine included roots and all. We design with root protection areas and dry-shade planting instead of pretending the tree is negotiable.
Why Us
The Difference A Design-First Studio Makes
- Every project starts as a scaled masterplan you can question, amend and sleep on - nothing is decided with a digger idling.
- The people who draw the garden are the people who build and plant it, so nothing is lost in translation between designer and contractor.
- Costs are itemised element by element against the drawings. Trimming the budget means choosing, not discovering.
- Soil pits and a levels survey before any plan is drawn - the scheme is designed for your ground, not for an average garden.
- First-season aftercare is part of the job. We plant gardens we expect to be judged on in five years, not five weeks.
Our Process
How A St Albans Garden Project Runs
Seven stages, in the same order every time. The gardens that disappoint are almost always the ones that jumped from a quick quote straight to the diggers, with no drawings for anyone to build to.
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Garden consultation and site survey
We walk the garden with you and listen more than we talk. Then the measuring starts: levels, orientation, drainage behaviour, existing trees worth keeping, and test pits to find out what soil you genuinely have rather than what the area is assumed to have.
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Concept design
A scaled masterplan showing the whole garden - spaces, routes, levels, structures and planting zones - with mood imagery for materials and atmosphere. This is where you react, argue and change things. Far cheaper to move a terrace on paper than in stone.
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Detailed design and planting plan
The agreed concept is developed into construction drawings and a species-by-species planting plan: setting-out dimensions, wall and step details, levels, lighting positions, and every plant named with its quantity and pot size.
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Itemised written costs
Because the design is fully drawn, the build can be priced properly - each element itemised, so if the figure needs trimming you choose what changes rather than watching quality quietly disappear from everything.
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Landscaping and construction
Groundworks, drainage, terracing, walls, steps and structures, built off the drawings by our own landscaping team. Setting-out is checked against the plan, and sub-bases and falls are treated as the point of the job, not the boring bit before the paving.
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Soil preparation and planting
Beds are decompacted and improved before a single plant goes in - on this area's clay-with-flints and chalk that preparation decides whether a border establishes or sulks. Then the planting plan is set out on the ground, adjusted by eye, and planted.
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Handover and first-season aftercare
We walk the finished garden with you, hand over the plans, plant list and care calendar, and come back during the first season - because a designed garden is at its most vulnerable in its first year, not its first week.
Reassurance
What Standing Behind A Garden Means
- The construction underneath it all
- Terraces, walls and steps fail from below, not above - a thin sub-base, no drainage behind a retaining wall, mortar where there should be movement. We build those hidden layers as if they were the visible ones, because in three winters' time they might as well be.
- Plants replaced if establishment fails
- Planting is living stock and a small percentage of losses in year one is horticultural reality. Where a plant we supplied and planted fails despite reasonable care, we replace it - and the aftercare visits exist partly to catch problems while they are still small.
- Built to the drawings, checked against them
- The detailed design is not a sales document, it is the build contract. Setting-out, levels and materials are checked against the drawings as the work proceeds, and you can hold the finished garden up to the plan line by line.
- Still answering the phone afterwards
- A garden is not finished at handover - it establishes over seasons. When a question comes up in year two, you will reach the people who designed and built it, not a voicemail that never calls back.
The Approach
Formal Bones, Generous Planting
If our gardens share a signature, it is structure you can read in winter - clipped forms, honest geometry, a strong ground plan - softened by planting that is allowed to behave like planting. The style flexes from crisp and contemporary to full cottage abundance depending on the house and the client; the underlying discipline does not.
The photographs on this site are design references we use in consultations to find out what you respond to, rather than our own portfolio - project photography from current builds is being gathered now, and we are glad to put you in touch with recent clients in the meantime.
How the design process worksFeedback
What Clients Say
Rated 5 out of 5
“We had lived with a sloping, unusable lawn in Batchwood for eleven years and assumed it was just what the garden was. The masterplan split it into three levels with a long bench built into the top retaining wall, and we now eat outside from April to October. The bit that impressed me most was the drainage they insisted on putting behind the walls - invisible, and clearly the reason nothing has moved.”
Rated 5 out of 5
“The house was rebuilt two years ago and the garden never caught up - a builder's lawn and a patio that faced the wrong way. They redesigned the whole plot around the new kitchen's sightlines and put in planting with real maturity. Neighbours assume the garden came with the rebuild, which I think is the point.”
Rated 5 out of 5
“What we wanted was borders like the ones you see at proper gardens, and what we had was clay you could throw pots with. The planting plan came with every species named and a paragraph on why it would cope with our soil. Two summers in, the border is better than the photographs they showed us at concept stage.”
Rated 5 out of 5
“An outdoor kitchen was my husband's idea and I was sceptical it would ever be used. Because the gas, power and lighting all went in before the paving, it looks built-in rather than bolted on, and we cooked outside more or less every weekend last summer. The festoon lighting on the pergola was their suggestion and it makes the whole thing at night.”
Rated 5 out of 5
“A proper process from start to finish. Survey with test pits, a concept we pushed back on twice without any sulking, then a build crew who turned up when they said and swept the drive every evening. The care calendar they left us is pinned inside the shed door and actually gets used.”
Design Notes
The Long Thin Plot Behind Half Of St Albans
Stand at the kitchen door of a Fleetville terrace and the fences are close enough to touch. Thirty metres away is a shed, a back fence and somebody else's shed beyond that. In between is a strip of grass with a worn line down the middle where everyone walks to the washing line.
The reflex is to call it a small garden. It is not. Five metres by thirty is 150 square metres, more than plenty of detached houses on newer estates. It is just the wrong shape for the way people try to use it, and this short film covers what to do about that.
Read the design guide
Budget
What Gardens Like This Cost
Better to know the territory before the first meeting than after it. Complete design-and-build projects, materials and VAT included:
- £25,000 – £40,000
- One part of the garden transformed properly - a main terrace, its walls and steps, and the planting that frames it.
- £40,000 – £65,000
- A whole-garden redesign: levels resolved, new lawn and borders, lighting, and full planting to the masterplan.
- £65,000 – £90,000+
- Large or steeply terraced plots, outdoor kitchens and structures, semi-mature specimen planting, phased builds.
Planting-only commissions start around £4,000. Every figure you get from us arrives itemised against a drawing.
See the full cost guide
Reading
From The Blog
Practical answers for Hertfordshire gardens - written from the soil we actually dig in, not from a content calendar.
Garden Design In Radlett And Shenley: London Clay, Protected Trees, Green Belt Rules And Costs
Planning garden design in Radlett or Shenley? London Clay and wet winters, TPOs on Loom Lane and Porters Park, Hertsmere and Green Belt rules for garden rooms, and real build costs.
Small And Courtyard Garden Design In St Albans: Walls, Shade And Everything Through The Hall
Designing a small or courtyard garden behind a St Albans terrace - shade from walls and extensions, access through the house, levels, materials, pots, storage and real costs.
Front Garden Design In St Albans: Parking, Bins, Bikes And Still Some Green
How to design a St Albans front garden that parks a car, hides the bins and still has planting - dropped kerbs through Herts County Council, the 5m² rule, Article 4 areas and real costs.
Questions
The Questions Every First Call Asks
- What does garden design cost in St Albans?
- A complete design-and-build garden - masterplan, landscaping, structures and planting - generally lands between £25,000 and £90,000 with us, depending on the size of the plot and how much of it changes. Planting commissions on their own start around £4,000. The honest driver is scope, not square metres: levels, retaining structures and outdoor kitchens move budgets far more than lawn area does. The cost guide breaks the bands down properly, and the first visit will give you a straight verbal range for your garden before any fee is involved.
- Do you only take on full garden redesigns?
- No - the masterplan can be built in one go or in planned phases, and some commissions are a single element done properly: the planting throughout an existing layout, a terrace and pergola, the front garden. What we avoid is unplanned piecemeal work, because ten separate decisions made in isolation is how most gardens got into the state that prompts the call. Even a phased project starts with a plan of the whole, so every stage builds toward the same garden.
- Will any of the work need planning permission?
- Rarely. Garden landscaping is mostly permitted development, and we design structures inside the permitted limits by default. The situations that need care locally: St Albans has extensive conservation areas - around the cathedral, Fishpool Street and St Michael's among others - where tree work needs six weeks' notice to St Albans City & District Council; raised decks over 30cm and taller boundary treatments need consent anywhere; and paving a front garden impermeably beyond five square metres triggers an application. We check your address's constraints as part of the survey and tell you plainly if anything in the brief would need an application.
- How does the design stage actually work?
- First a free visit - we walk the garden, talk about how you want to live in it, and give you a feel for scope and budget. If you go ahead, the design commission starts with a full measured survey including soil test pits, then a scaled concept masterplan you can question and change, then detailed construction drawings and a species-by-species planting plan. Design fees are quoted upfront and depend on garden size and complexity; if we go on to build the garden, part of the fee is absorbed into the build contract.
- How long does a garden project take from first call to finished?
- Design typically takes four to eight weeks depending on how quickly decisions come back. The build itself runs four to eight weeks for most gardens, longer for heavily terraced plots. End to end, three to five months is normal - and worth planning backwards from: a project that starts design in winter is being planted in ideal autumn or spring conditions and ready for its first full summer.
- What happens after the garden is handed over?
- You get the drawings, the plant schedule and a month-by-month care calendar, and we come back during the first growing season to check establishment, adjust anything that needs it and replace the odd plant that fails despite good care. After that, some clients look after the garden themselves with the calendar, some hand it to their own gardener - the plan is written so either works - and some ask us back seasonally. A designed garden should get better every year; the first-year visits are how we make sure it starts that way.
Coverage
Areas We Cover
We design and build gardens across St Albans and the towns west and north of it, from Radlett up to Welwyn and out through the Chilterns edge to Berkhamsted. Not listed? Ask anyway - we take on projects a little further out where the garden is interesting.
- St Albans
- Harpenden
- Radlett
- Berkhamsted
- Rickmansworth
- Chorleywood
- Watford
- Hemel Hempstead
- Wheathampstead
- Welwyn
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On Google
Where The Drawing Board Lives
Our studio is on Heathlands Drive in Bernards Heath, off the Harpenden Road. It's a working office rather than a showroom, so the first meeting happens in your garden, not ours. The Google listing has our hours and number, and once your garden is planted it's the place to tell other St Albans homeowners how it went.
Walk Us Round The Garden
The first visit costs nothing and commits you to nothing. We look at the space, ask what is not working, and tell you plainly what it could become and roughly what that costs - before any design fee enters the conversation.