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Warnes McGarr & Co garden design

Five things to consider before redesigning your garden

When it comes to garden design, planning should take place during the colder months to allow the greatest reward in terms of enjoying the garden during the hottest months of the year," says Michael John McGarr, director and garden designer at Warnes McGarr & Co.Spring is a season full of potential for both the plants about to spring to life in your garden, but also for homeowners to lay the seeds of their garden design planning ideas.The arrival of spring also means that summer is just around the corner, so take the time now to really think about how you want

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Landscape Design Survey for Wildlife.

By Michael John McGarrA landscape design survey for wildlife shouldn't just be an exercise in measuring the site backwards and forwards, anyone with a laser level can accurately achieve this task.The key to creating a garden design that is beneficial to wildlife is to understand the current site conditions on a deeper level.More often than not wildlife is abundant on sites that have either been neglected or mismanaged for any length of time.Ironically the biggest danger to existing wildlife is the potential threat of further construction and development.  The onus is then on the landscape designer to cushion the effects

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New Ideas : New Materials in Landscape Architecture.

So it begins! It was great to get on the "big train to the big smoke" on Monday.  As I dragged my suitcase through the streets of Wigan towards the train station, my usual penchant for garden design observation kicked in.  I began to take in the good, and not so good gardens and landscape architecture within the public spaces around town.  I needn't have been too concerned with this, as what lay in store for me was something far more exciting. The London College of Garden Design are hosting the "Spring Info Burst : New Ideas : New materials"  

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Houzz awards 2019 – Award Winning Landscape Design.

Houzz Awards 2019 - Warnes McGarr & Co. - Award Winning Landscape Design. Awarded by the community of over 40 million monthly users, annual BOH badge highlights home renovation & design professionals with Top ratings and most popular home designs "Warnes - McGarr & Co. of  Wigan has won “Best Of Design ” on Houzz®, the leading platform for home renovation and design. The multi award winning landscape design and build company was chosen by the more than 40 million monthly unique users that comprise the Houzz community from among more than 2.1 million active home building, renovating and design industry professionals.The Best Of Houzz is

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Garden lighting in landscape design

By Michael John McGarr Garden lighting in landscape design. Garden lighting in landscape design is extremely important and it is often an afterthought for most clients. However, we encourage them to think about lighting early on. In our British climate, our garden is viewed most of the year from the interior of the property so it is paramount that lighting is effective. This is particularly poignant in winter when shorter days render lighting the most effective feature within a garden.It always make me smile when clients use their garden lighting systems to wow guests at winter dinner parties. It never occurred to them that they would be

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Sketchup for landscape design.

By Robert Warnes.Sketchup for Landscape design. I have done quite some reading recently on established landscape design principles and conventions, but rarely have I come across anything detailing the specific method and workflow we employ as a company of designers to achieve our garden designs. There will be many garden design purists out there who firmly believe that in order to effectively design it is essential to be able to put pencil to paper and physically draw the garden. I disagree. I am unfortunately not blessed with talent or skill to do this. I do feel however this obstacle can be overcome by

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Landscape design in 2019 – A New Movement.

By Michael John McGarr Our niche within landscape design in 2019. Our niche within landscape design in 2019 has developed from our passion to create gardens that people can use all year round, as well as a continuing trend for outdoor living.We feel that a traditional lawned garden with flower beds around the edges is designed to be viewed through the window and perhaps mowed once a week in the summer to keep it looking spick and span. We can achieve so much more...[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="3600"] Outdoor living space and outdoor kitchen in a landscape design in 2019 by Warnes-McGarr &

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5 ways to include wildlife in your garden design.

'The way we see it, our gardens don't belong to us alone – they belong to all the wildlife that lives there, eats there or even just uses them as a stopping off point,' says award-winning garden designer Michael John McGarr of Warnes McGarr & Co. 'This could involve the hedgehog that wanders through your garden at night, the birds that stop off in the thick shrubbery, right through to the beetles and woodlice that live under a stone at the end of the garden.'It doesn't take a huge amount of effort to ensure wildlife can flourish in your garden

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Extrospective influence by Michael John McGarr

Talking about extrospective influence

by Michael John McGarrI did a talk to a group of garden design students recently where I spoke about extrospective influence. This is something I truly believe makes me a better designer, and overall, better at the creative process.So what is extrospective influence?For me, it's using any medium of art to gain creative influence, and to spark off a chain of thoughts and ideas, which culminate in a theme or concept, which is then workable into a new client brief.Although I am passionate about garden and landscape design and ecology, I rarely read garden design or landscape magazines

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Warnes McGarr & Co at The Landscape Show

By Michael McGarrWe were really honoured to be asked to speak at the Landscape Show which takes place in London on Wednesday, September 18 and Thursday, September 19. This is one of the biggest exhibitions for the garden and landscape design industry, so we are thrilled to be heading down to the big smoke next week.We will be sitting on a panel on the Wednesday, hosted by the brilliant London College of Garden Design, entitled How to shake up your garden design. Our landscape design and garden design always pushes the boundaries with creativity and innovative new technologies, so we

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RHS Tatton Cheshire - Poisonous Garden Warnes McGarr & Co

The Poisonous Garden planting list

RHS Tatton 2018 in Cheshire launched today, so we were incredibly pleased to present The Poisonous Garden. It was amazing to see crowds of people flowing in when the gates opened at 10am - this might be the busiest year that we've seen yet.We've been planning this design for the best part of 2018, and it's taken us a really long time to find just the right suppliers and the right materials. At 650 sq m, this is a huge project so it was worth every second taken to get it looking perfect.Here is the extensive planting list for the

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The Poisonous Garden RHS Tatton Warne McGarr and Co

Building The Poisonous Garden

This week we started on site managing the build of the Poisonous Garden - the pretty large and high profile exhibit for this year's RHS Tatton Flower Show.After three years of creating award-winning show gardens at RHS Tatton, which takes place at Tatton Park in Cheshire, we did look at designing something for other RHS shows. However, in January this year, we were asked by the brilliant RHS events team if we would design the Poisonous Garden. It seems they like what we've been doing and we were honoured to be asked to partner up with them.So, after months and

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