Planning your outdoor kitchen

We are still receiving many enquiries about outdoor kitchens with a full range of facilities – so now is the best time to plan out exactly what you want.It’s best to plan around where the sun falls in your garden, during the middle of summer, and decide which parts of the garden you are most likely to use in the morning, the afternoon and then in the evening. Take a look around and figure out where are the best places to cook, where you would put your dining area, and where you want a sunbathing area. Most people want a high quality

• Categories: Advice and tips, Cheshire, ecological garden design, ecological landscape design, ecology, Garden design, Outdoor kitchens
• July 1st 2022

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Five years since gold at Tatton

Five years ago we were in the middle of building the ultra-futuristic ‘2101’ garden for RHS Tatton, which went onto win a gold award. The concept was around planting for climate change, with huge cowboy-film style Saguaro cacti, as well as the large round ‘mother-in-law’s cushions’ golden barrel cacti. We used large format porcelain paving to create a large path and seating area, with shaded pergola to shade from the intense sun. There was also a rain garden, designed to absorb excess rainwater, for climate extremes. People don’t realise just how much work goes into making a show garden picture-perfect, planning every

• Categories: Advice and tips, Awards, Business news, Cheshire, ecological garden design, ecological landscape design, ecology, Garden design
• June 24th 2022

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Superbloom at the Tower of London

I've been following the fantastic work of visionary designer Nigel Dunnett, with his new project at the Tower of London to commemorate the Queen's Platinum Jubilee.  More than 20 million seeds have been sown in the moats around the historic landmark, which have just recently sprung to life and flowered. The naturalistic planting scheme is carefully planned to evolve into a riot of colour and scents over the summer.  A slide will transport visitors directly down into the flowers, for a fully immersive experience.  As the professor of planting design and urban horticulture, Nigel is well-known for his stunning Olympic 2012 meadows and

• Categories: Advice and tips, Business news, Cheshire, ecological garden design, ecological landscape design, ecology, Garden design
• June 20th 2022

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Will you lock up your lawnmower?

I love the #NoMowMay campaign and finally people are realising that dandelions and daisies are not a danger and clover should not be cleared.  It's fantastic to see so many people on social media showing photos of their lawn and saying they will let their lawn grow, as part of #NoMowMay.  Research has found that letting flowers and plants within your lawn bloom naturally can provide 10 times the amount of nectar for bees, butterflies and other pollinators.  I would recommend choosing an area of lawn to leave growing, and still mow the parts of the lawn that you use. You could create

• Categories: Advice and tips, ecological garden design, ecological landscape design, ecology, Garden design, Lancashire, landscape architecture, Manchester
• May 9th 2022

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Floating plants at Bridgewater Basin

This week I had a meeting in central Manchester, so I went into town early to take a look at the biodiversity work done around Bridgewater Basin on the Rochdale canal.  Years ago, this was a tired dirty canal basin, surrounded by beautiful buildings such as the Bridgewater Hall. Now it's been given a biodiversity makeover and it is far more in keeping with a modern city centre, that brings together re-development with supporting local ecology.  Now these floating active ecosystems help improve the biodiversity and the water quality, creating a haven for wildlife and obviously increases the aesthetics for passersby. This

• Categories: Advice and tips, Business news, ecological garden design, ecological landscape design, ecology, Garden design
• April 29th 2022

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The success of the hedgehog highway

I read this fabulous piece of news that hedgehog numbers are increasing in urban areas (although not as great news that rural numbers have still dropped.)Your average person’s knowledge of hedgehogs’ habitats has increased due to brilliant education around creating ‘hedgehog highways’ between urban gardens to allow hedgehogs to roam throughout the night.Hedgehogs can travel up to 12 miles per night, so our urban or suburban walls and fences make this really tricky for them. We always design in hedgehog highways into any fences, walls or boundaries that we design – these small factors can make a huge difference. Pictured is

• Categories: Advice and tips, Business news, Cheshire, ecological garden design, ecological landscape design, ecology, Garden design, landscape architecture, Landscape design, Manchester, Press coverage
• March 25th 2022

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Outdoor art at Chatsworth House

Outdoor art installations are incredibly inspirational – not only because they showcase an artist’s expression of creativity, but they are designed to sit within a landscape giving the ideas more context than an isolated piece of artwork. Land artist Richard Long’s Cornwall Slate Line was placed at Chatsworth in 2010. Like much of his work, it’s directly translatable to garden design. The same installation is displayed in both a gallery and garden setting, showing the versatility of the piece. It’s great to see the textures of the stone when both wet and dry – something that is often overlooked at early landscape design

• Categories: ecology, Garden design, Lancashire, Landscape design, london, Michael John McGarr
• March 11th 2022

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Plant a tree before spring

Tree planting season is coming to an end so now is a great time to think about investing in a multi-functional specimen tree to get planted before spring. It’s important to look at the end size of a tree compared to the size of your garden – you don’t want a 20m high Scots Pine in a small back garden in 10 years time! There are many benefits to using the beautifully named Mophead maple (Acer Platanoides ‘Globosum’) within a garden planting scheme, including its autumn colour. Its round tight canopy carries a contemporary look which allows underplanting of bulbs and gives

• Categories: Advice and tips, ecological landscape design, ecology, Garden design, landscape architecture, Landscape design, Uncategorised
• February 18th 2022

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Low-maintenance garden design- experiments, developments and lessons in outdoor living.

by Michael John McGarr The first question that many clients ask me on that very first consultation meeting is can I design a beautiful garden that will stay beautiful? How do I create a high-spec luxury outdoor living space that is really and truly low maintenance? My contemporary outdoor living spaces are actually naturally low-maintenance. I would not design a stunning space and then tell you that the huge lawn needs mowing twice a week and you need to hand-weed dandelions out of it (who could be bothered to do that?!). I won't leave you with swathes of bedding plants that need to

• Categories: Advice and tips, Business news, ecological garden design, ecological landscape design, ecology, Garden design, innovation, Lancashire, landscape architecture, Landscape design, Manchester, Michael John McGarr, Outdoor kitchens, Residential garden, sustainable garden design, wildlife
• November 29th 2019

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Six ways you can help the environment in your garden

by Michael McGarr Environmental issues are top of the news agenda at the moment, and the recent State of Nature report really hammered home how perilously the UK's fragile ecology was faring. This article I read on the BBC stated that: - In the UK, one in seven species are threatened with extinction - 41% of UK species specified have declined since 1970. - one in five plants are at risk of extinction - wildflowers have been lost at the rate of one species per year since the 1950s. These facts and figures are horrifying and I just hope that our Government will take heed of this

• Categories: Advice and tips, Business news, ecological garden design, ecological landscape design, ecology, Garden design, innovation, landscape architecture, Landscape design, Michael John McGarr, Residential garden, sustainable garden design, wildlife
• October 21st 2019

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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

• Categories: Advice and tips, Architecture, Awards, Business news, Cheshire, ecological garden design, ecological landscape design, ecology, Garden design, innovation, Lancashire, landscape architecture, Landscape design, Michael John McGarr, Outdoor kitchens, Press coverage, Residential garden, Show gardens, sustainable garden design, wildlife
• October 19th 2019

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