Landscape gardeners and garden designers in Glasgow have been lucky enough to remain busy over this winter, with interest in landscape gardening projects remaining high throughout. Often landscape gardeners and garden designers take a chunk of time off in January, but not this year!

For those of you looking for landscape gardeners or garden designers in Glasgow, here are a few pointers for you. Landscape gardeners cover everything from hard landscapers who concentrate on the slabs and decking, through to the more elusive soft landscape specialists - such as Angel Horticulture Ltd - who focus on the plants, turf, and living parts of your garden. Garden designers usually either work as part of a landscaping business, or as stand-alone garden design studios.

When garden designers are creating planting plans, one of the key plant characteristics that we look at is their height. This isn't just the obvious point about not planting a majestic oak under the eaves of your house, nor is it about creating a neat appearance. Using plant heights strategically affects how the plants live with each other, and how you as the garden user are able to interact with the planted spaces in your garden.

When garden designers are creating planting plans, it is not just a random selection of plants that will enjoy the conditions, there are myriad factors to consider. At a basic level, garden designers will be thinking about soil pH, soil moisture levels, light and shade levels and exposure to the elements. However, from a cosmetic point of view, one of the most intruguing theories is the prospect-refuge concept originally propounded by Jay Appleton in 1975. If you are searching for garden designers in Glasgow, you will hopefully find a knowledgeable designer who is able to really think through your planting - especially your trees and hedges.

Garden designers in Glasgow and elsewhere will always have the ultimate size of herbaceous plants, shrubs and trees in mind when creating planting plans and garden designs for their clients. In slightly more ‘robust’ climates such as we have in Glasgow (compared to the rest of the UK), some plants will not reach their full potential however, and this is where a degree of horticultural knowledge comes into making sure planting plans are accurate when creating garden designs.

Garden designers and landscape gardeners often choose plants by thinking about how many seasons of interest they give. As a garden designer and landscape gardener based in Glasgow, I often choose the likes of Malus ‘Evereste’, a crab apple, as it gives three seasons of interest - spring flowers, leaves in the summer, and yellow foliage (and orange fruits!) in the autumn.